Search

Summit Public Schools (SPS), a California-based charter school network established in 2003, is widely promoted nationally as a success story to be emulated. A policy environment friendly to charter schools and digital technologies, together with hundreds of millions of dollars in technology industry contributions, enabled its growth and its national visibility. Because of SPS's boasts of success and its national prominence, understanding its story is a useful way to gain insight into how Silicon Valley funds and markets education initiatives. It also reveals inadequacies in policy related to school performance, digital educational programs, protection of student data, and school funding. This research brief analyzes the documents SPS provided in response to a request for public records bearing on its reports of students' academic success, its curriculum and instruction program, its proprietary digital platform, its protection of student data, its funding, and the validity and reliability of its assessments. In its discussion of documents both provided and not provided, the authors illustrate how SPS serves as an example of how nominally nonprofit charter school organizations evade public oversight and provide technology companies and their investors with both a market for their products and a continually renewing source of valuable data from young people.

Attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT) have been in the news for over a year. Rallies have been organized, school board meetings disrupted, executive orders issued, and legislation introduced to remove or exclude CRT from school curriculum. Since early 2021, eight states have passed legislation that, broadly speaking, seeks to ban historical information and critical analysis related to race and racism in public school classrooms, and additional legislation is being considered. Advocates of these administrative and legislative actions argue that providing students with information on race and racism is un-American, divisive, and itself racist. This policy memo reviews the contemporary attacks against CRT, describes the political objectives of these attacks, explores historical examples of similar tactics, and provides resources on evidence-based strategies to counter the propaganda.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given the entire country a crash course in virtual education and digital education platforms. School leaders have been forced to consider a set of very imperfect options as they struggle to reopen their schools. This three-brief collection identifies key issues for school leaders to consider before adopting a digital platform or learning program that will impact curriculum and teaching, student assessment, and privacy/data security. To help ensure that school leaders adopt digital technology that reflects the school's stated values and goals, the briefs offer recommendations to guide decisions about which digital learning products to choose, how to best use them in the current crisis, and which to abandon when the crisis has passed.

Virtual learning and personalized learning have been at the forefront of education reform discussions for over a decade. Backed by almost $200 million philanthropic dollars from the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the Gates Foundation, and others, Summit Public Schools has aggressively marketed its Summit Learning Platform to schools across the United States since 2015. As a result, the Summit Learning Program is now one of the most prominent digital personalized learning programs in the United States. Its rapid spread--despite a lack of transparency and the absence of convincing evidence that it can deliver on its promises--provides a powerful example of how policymakers are challenged when faced with a well-financed and self-interested push for schools to adopt digital personalized learning programs. There is now an urgent need for policymakers to move quickly to protect the public interest by establishing oversight and accountability mechanisms related to digital platforms and personalized learning programs. [Seven appendixes as well as the authors' reply to T.L.P. Education's blog response to this research brief are available on the publisher's web site.]

As proponents continue to make the case that virtual education can expand student choices and improve the efficiency of public education, full-time virtual schools have attracted a great deal of attention. Advocates contend that this potential for individualization allows virtual schools to promote greater student achievement than can be realized in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. NEPC researchers found, however, that the research evidence does not support this claim. This three-part brief provides disinterested scholarly analyses of the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools; reviews the relevant available research related to virtual school practices; provides an overview of recent state legislative efforts to craft virtual schools policy; and offers policy recommendations based on the available evidence.

Personalized learning programs are proliferating in schools across the United States, fueled by philanthropic dollars, tech industry lobbying, marketing by third-party vendors, and a policy environment that provides little guidance and few constraints. In this research brief, authors Faith Boninger, Alex Molnar, and Christopher M. Saldaña consider how we got to this point. Beginning with an examination of the history of personalized learning and the key assumptions made by its proponents, they review the research evidence and reflect on the roles and possible impacts of the digital technologies deployed by many programs. Despite many red flags, the pressure to adopt personalized learning continues to mount. The authors thus recommend that schools and policymakers pause in their efforts to promote and implement personalized learning until rigorous review, oversight, and enforcement mechanisms are established.

As schools continue to integrate technologies into every aspect of school life, those technologies are being harnessed to amplify corporate marketing and profit-making, extending the reach of commercializing activities into every aspect of students' school lives. Although marketers' school-focused efforts are often billed as "innovative" and "out-of-the-box," many of them are little more than repackaged marketing strategies that over the years have been seen again and again. Schools' increasing reliance on education technology has intensified the kind of school-focused marketing that has been studied for years: (1) appropriation of space on school property; (2) sponsored programs and activities; (3) exclusive agreements; (4) sponsorship of supplementary educational materials; (5) incentive programs; (6) fundraising; and (7) digital marketing. However, in addition to the traditional goal of providing brand exposure, education technology now engages students in activities that facilitate the collection of valuable personal data and that socializes students to accept such surveillance as normal. This year's report focuses in particular on how technological advances, the lure of "personalization," and lax regulation foster the collection of personal data and overwhelm efforts to protect children's privacy. For-profit entities are driving increasing reliance on education technology with the goal of transforming education into an ever-larger profit center--by selling technology hardware, software, and services to schools; by using technology to reduce personnel costs; by creating brand-loyal customers; and increasingly, by turning student data into a marketable product. The goal of profit-making, in turn, may often distort and diminish the quality of education children receive. The dominant beliefs currently associated with technology and economic development are leading schools and districts to change their policies, pay huge sums of money to private vendors, and create systems for divulging vast amounts of children's personal information to education technology companies. Education applications, particularly those that attempt to "personalize" student learning, are powered by proprietary algorithms that may harm children as they implement theories of learning without policymakers or teachers being able to examine how they work or how student data are being used. By adopting these applications and encouraging or requiring that students use them, schools effectively funnel children into a "surveillance economy" that harvests their data for profit while encouraging them to adopt an individualist, consumerist worldview. In this context, policymaking to protect children's privacy or to evaluate the quality of the educational technology they use ranges from inadequate to nonexistent. (A list of notes and references is included.) [For the previous report, "Learning to be Watched: Surveillance Culture at School--The Eighteenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends, 2014-2015," see ED574730.]

In the five years since the first National Education Policy Center (NEPC) "Annual Report on Virtual Education" was released in 2013, virtual education has continued to be a focal point for policymakers. Proponents argue that virtual education can expand student choices and improve the efficiency of public education. In particular, full-time virtual schools (also sometimes referred to as virtual charter schools, virtual academies, online schools or cyber schools) have attracted a great deal of attention. Many believe that online curriculum can be tailored to individual students more effectively than curriculum in traditional classrooms, giving it the potential to promote greater student achievement than can be realized in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Further, the promise of lower costs--primarily for instructional personnel and facilities--makes virtual schools financially appealing to both policymakers and for-profit providers. The assumption that virtual schools are cost effective and educationally sound, coupled with policies expanding school choice and providing market incentives attractive to for-profit companies, continue to help fuel virtual school growth in the U.S. There is, however, little high-quality systematic evidence that the rapid expansion of the past several years is wise. Indeed, evidence presented in the NEPC annual reports argues for caution. Nevertheless, the movement toward virtual schools continues to gather steam, often supported by weak or even dishonest data. For example, as a part of the confirmation hearings for the current Secretary of Education, National Public Radio reported that Secretary Betsy DeVos responded to a written question from Senator Patty Murray using performance data provided by a for-profit corporation that inflated the four-year graduation rates of virtual schools--in some cases by as much as 300%.1 The 2017 NEPC Annual Report contributes to the existing evidence related to virtual education, and so to debates surrounding it. It provides objective analysis of the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools; available research on virtual school practices and policy; and an overview of recent state efforts to craft new policy. In Section I--"Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools: Enrollment, Student Characteristics, and Performance," Gary Miron, Charisse Gulosino, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson focus on two specific types of K-12 online and blended learning: full-time virtual schools and blended schools. The authors assigned schools in their study a unique identification code that allowed them to gather complete data about each school from a variety of sources (the National Center for Educational Statistics, individual Departments of Education, and so on). The authors use the terms "full-time virtual school" and "full-term blended school" because they want to link these school types to data sets on school characteristics, student demographics, and school outcomes. In Section II--"Still No Evidence, Increased Call for Regulation: Research to Guide Virtual School Policy," Michael Barbour focuses on all forms of K-12 virtual and blended learning. Barbour distinguishes among the different forms of virtual schooling--both supplemental and full-time--and describes the limited reliable research on blended learning programs and blended learning schools. In Section III--"Key Policy Issues in Virtual Schools: Finance and Governance, Instructional Quality, and Teacher Quality," Luis Huerta, Sheryl Rankin Shafer, Jennifer King Rice, and David Nitkin use the general term "virtual school" as an umbrella term including all forms of K-12 online learning. When the National Education Policy Center first began this annual examination in 2013, the distinctions among K-12 online learning, virtual schooling and cyber schooling were not as prominent within the academic literature. Additionally, many of the K-12 online learning programs sponsored or supported by State Departments of Education were referred to as virtual schools. Similarly, much of the legislation and policy language used the term virtual (for example, virtual charter school). For these reasons, this annual report was and will continue to use the term Virtual Schools in its title. Therefore, unless they are quoting specific language from a given piece of legislation or policy, the authors of this third section will continue to use the term "virtual schools." (Each section contains a list of notes and references.) [For "Virtual Schools Report 2016: Directory and Performance Review," see ED574701.]

Digital technologies used by marketers continue to evolve. Sophisticated and personalized, they help ensure that today's children and adolescents are constantly connected and available to advertisers wherever they may roam. Moreover, because digital technologies enable extensive personalization, they amplify opportunities for marketers to take over not only public space but also individuals' private space. In this 2014-2015 report, the authors consider how schools facilitate the work of digital marketers and examine the effects of their relentless tracking of and marketing to children. Schools now routinely direct students online to do their schoolwork; and they collect student data using education and recordkeeping software that is useful to marketers as well--creating a threat to students' privacy. Schools' embrace of digital technology augments and amplifies traditional types of education-related marketing, which include: (1) appropriation of space on school property; (2) exclusive agreements; (3) sponsored programs and activities; (4) incentive programs; (5) sponsorship of supplementary educational materials; and (6) fundraising. These marketing efforts, conducted with the implicit blessing of administrators, teachers, and parents, combine to normalize for children the notion that corporations have a legitimate role in their education and in their lives more generally. In addition to threatening children's right to privacy, these practices raise serious concerns about their effect on children's physical and psychological well-being and about their impact on the integrity of the education children receive. By engaging in these practices, schools abet the socialization of students as consumers who take for granted that others have a right to keep their behavior under constant surveillance for marketing purposes--even at the cost of their own well-being. In this report, the authors provided the following recommendations: (1) Parents, teachers, and administrators--as individuals and through their organizations--work to make public the threats that branded programs and materials, as well as unregulated digital technologies, pose to children when they are allowed into schools and classrooms; (2) The Federal Trade Commission extend the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) protections to age 14 and strengthen the protections offered to adolescents ages 15-18; (3) Industry self-regulation not be relied upon to protect the interests of students. Instead, policymakers should adopt enforceable legislation that holds schools, districts, and companies with access to student data accountable for violations of student privacy; (4) Legislators carefully review proposed legislative language to ensure that it does not contain loopholes that provide companies with opportunities to collect and exploit children's data while also "following the letter of the law"; (5) Those designing and reviewing relevant policies ensure that policies protect the privacy not only of student educational records but also of the wide variety of student data (including anonymized data) now being collected and shared. Such policies should explicitly address the potential commercial use of any data collected; (6) School district and privacy specialists review contracts with educational technology and other providers to check specifically for provisions or omissions that enable third parties to monitor and/or exploit students for commercial gain; and (7) Policymakers at every level seek to eliminate perverse incentives that encourage parents, teachers, and administrators to sacrifice student privacy in an effort to financially support educationally necessary school activities. Appended to the report is: Comparison of 2015 Federal Education Data Privacy Bills. (The report contains 182 notes and references.) [For the previous year's report, see "On the Block: Student Data and Privacy in the Digital Age--The Seventheenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends, 2013-2014," at ED558607.]

Computer technology has made it possible to aggregate, collate, analyze, and store massive amounts of information about students. School districts and private companies that sell their services to the education market now regularly collect such information, raising significant issues about the privacy rights of students. Most school districts lack the resources to manage all of the student data that federal and state laws now require that they collect and report. As a result, they are likely to hire private vendors to identify, collect, manage, and analyze student data. This has opened up opportunities for private vendors to access student information and to share it with others. Further, the computerization of student work offers opportunities for companies that provide education technology and educational applications to obtain and pass on to third parties information about students. Which information may be appropriately collected, who has a right to see it, how long the information may be held, and how errors and inaccuracies are to be corrected have become critical policy issues. Important in this mix is that student information, even information in the form of "anonymized" meta-data (or massive amounts of data reported without linking specific information and individuals), is valuable to marketers interested in selling products and services to students and their families. Because of these critical concerns, this year's report on school commercializing trends reviews the policy landscape related to student data and assesses the dangers associated with the dearth of policies to protect students and their families from third parties who wish to profit from access to information collected through schools. As legislators develop statutory language and district leaders develop their contracting policies, the authors recommend that they review the comprehensive guidelines detailed in the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Student Privacy Bill of Rights. The authors also recommend that policymakers develop policies that encompass not only the privacy of student educational records but also the wide variety of student data (including anonymized data that may now be collected and shared). These policies should explicitly address the potential commercial use of any data collected. Finally, the authors recommend that the burden of protecting student data be placed not only on schools and districts but also on any private vendors with access to student data. This would align the interests of all parties, public and private, in protecting student privacy. An appendix contains: State Laws Addressing Student Data Privacy (2011-2014): Synopses of Major Provisions, Noting Significant Gaps in Protection, Exclusions and Omissions. (This report contains a list of 103 notes and references.)

There is a lot of money to be made from marketing to children. Children make spending decisions about their own cash, they influence their parents' spending decisions--and they have their whole purchasing lives ahead of them. For these reasons, marketers have, over the years, done everything they can to create a "360-degree" marketing environment that engages with young people over and over, wherever they are and whatever they are doing: browsing cyberspace, watching television, engaging in an offline activity, or going to school. Since 1998, these reports have examined trends in schoolhouse commercialism in the context of general marketing trends. The reports organize school commercialism into seven categories: (1) appropriation of space on school property; (2) exclusive agreements; (3) sponsored programs and activities; (4) digital marketing; (5) incentive programs; (6) sponsorship of supplementary educational materials; and (7) fundraising. While the primary interest was assessing the legislative landscape relative to school commercialism, the authors also consulted a number of non-legislative information sources. They sought information on innovations in marketing, on how school policymakers described school marketing arrangements, and on the positions of various education and non-education policy organizations toward school commercialism. Notwithstanding the positive development of the FTC's rule changes, marketers continue to target children via their computers and mobile devices. In the education world, in particular, this targeting was eclipsed in 2012-2013 by the privacy controversy generated by corporate access to student educational data. In the 2011-2012 report , it was recommended that policymakers prohibit advertising in schools unless an independent, disinterested entity can clearly demonstrate that a proposed commercializing activity will cause no harm to children or otherwise undermine the quality of their education. The authors stand by that recommendation. The following are appended: (1) Initial Search Terms: Legislative Databases; (2) Websites Associated with Relevant Topics; (3) Search Terms: Internet Searches; (4) Interview Documentation and Protocol; (5) State Laws and Regulations as of May 2004; and (6) Bills Addressing School Commercialism Introduced and Signed in 2012-2013. A list of notes and references is included. [For "Promoting Consumption at School. Health Threats Associated with School House Commercialism--The Fifteenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends: 2011-2012," see ED544262.]

Many states and communities are in chronic fiscal crisis. It is no surprise that beleaguered educators are ever more open to offers of corporate "partnerships" that might bring in additional money for their schools. Unfortunately, many school-business partnerships are little more than marketing arrangements that have few benefits for schools while carrying with them the potential to harm children in a variety of ways. "The 2011-2012 Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends" is the third in a series of annual reports to examine how commercializing activities in schools threaten children's well-being. Prior reports examined psychological threats (2010) and educational threats (2011). The focus of this report is the health threats posed by the marketing of food and beverage products in school. The incidence of childhood obesity has tripled over the past 30 years, and its consequent illnesses threaten to reduce both the length and the quality of life. Although no specific food nor any one marketing campaign has been causally linked to higher rates of obesity, research indicates that food advertising does influence children's food preferences, their purchase requests, and their eating behavior. In schools, this means that advertising for foods of minimal nutritional value or for foods high in fat, sugar, and/or salt is designed to convince children to like and want more and more of a product that is unhealthy when consumed to excess. Food products are heavily marketed in schools by appropriating space on school property, exclusive marketing agreements with schools and districts, digital marketing, fundraising, school program sponsorships, incentive programs, and supplementary educational materials. The health threat posed by an advertised food is tied to its nutritional quality, but psychological and/or educational threats are often also implicated. Commercializing activities in schools may, therefore, be problematic, even if a specific advertised product is not a threat to children's health. Thus, the potential threat to children posed by marketing in schools is great enough that we believe the default assumption for schools, districts, and state and federal policymakers must be that marketing in schools is harmful unless explicitly proven otherwise. The recommendation is that policymakers should prohibit advertising in schools unless the school provides compelling evidence that their intended advertising program causes no harm to children. Appended is a list of websites associated with advertising and marketing, health care and nutrition, government policy, education, and academic research which were regularly reviewed for material relevant to this report. A list of 193 notes and references is also provided. (Contains 1 figure.) [The annual report on Schoolhouse Commercialism trends is produced by the Commercialism in Education Research Unit.]

Over the past several decades, schools have faced increasing pressure to "partner" with businesses, both to be seen as responsive to the business community and out of the hope that partnerships would help make up budget shortfalls as states reduced public funding for education. Often, school-business partnerships are little more than marketing arrangements with little if any educational benefit and the potential to harm to children in a variety of ways. The 2010-2011 Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends considers how commercializing activities in schools harm children educationally. It is relatively easy to understand how corporate commercializing activities harm children educationally by undermining curricular messages (as when candy and soft drink ads contradict nutrition lessons) or by displacing educational activities (as when students spend time focused on a corporate contest rather than the curriculum). A less obvious, though perhaps more serious, educational harm associated with school commercialism is the threat it poses to critical thinking. Researchers generally agree that thinking critically requires abilities, such as problem-solving, decision-making, inductive and deductive inference-making, divergent thinking, evaluative thinking, and reasoning. According to the research literature, critical thinking is best cultivated in a school environment that encourages students to ask questions, to think about their thought processes, and thus to develop habits of mind that enable them to transfer the critical thinking skills they learn in class to other, unrelated, situations. It is not in the interest of corporate sponsors to promote critical thinking. Far from it: their interest is in selling their products or services or "telling their story." Encouraging children to learn to identify and critically evaluate a sponsor's point of view and biases, to consider alternative points of view or products and services, or to generate and consider solutions to problems other than the ones sponsors offer would, from a corporate point of view, be self-defeating. For this reason, sponsored messages will necessarily avoid touching on anything that might lead to thinking inconsistent with the intended message. Although commercializing activities channel student thinking into a corporate-friendly track, the impact on critical thinking of doing so is rarely considered. In part this is because some commercializing activities, such as sponsored educational materials, may, on the surface, appear to have educational benefit. They may, for example, claim to address national standards for basic skills, or to encourage analytic thinking about contemporary issues such as energy policy. Moreover, since marketing is often framed as a "partnership" with schools, even when teachers might want to engage students in thinking critically about the message being marketed, doing so would mean "biting the hand that feeds" the school. Thus, to understand the educational harms of school marketing, it is necessary to understand both how commercial activities cause some things to happen in schools and classrooms and how they prevent or discourage other things from happening. Appended to the report are (1) A list of websites associated with advertising, marketing, health care, nutrition, government policy, education, and academic research, regularly reviewed for material relevant to this report; and (2) Gubbins' Matrix of Thinking Skills. A list of Notes and References is also included. [For "Effectively Embedded: Schools and the Machinery of Modern Marketing--The Thirteenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends: 2009-2010," see ED513814.]

This policy brief describes the growth of schoolhouse advertising and marketing activities in the last few decades, assesses the harms associated with commercial activities in schools, and provides advocates, policymakers, and educators with a policy framework and model legislative language designed to protect children and the integrity of education programs from advertising and marketing in schools. It identifies seven categories of commercial activities typically found in schools (exclusive agreements, appropriation of space, corporate-sponsored educational materials, sponsorship of programs and activities, electronic marketing, incentive programs, and fund raising), and provides model legislative language to regulate such activities. These statutory options illustrate three different policy tools: (a) mandates, (b) balancing tests and regulatory requirements, and (c) process-based reform. Multiple options are offered so that state legislatures and local school districts can tailor policy to local contexts, school-specific needs, and community demands. Appendices include: (1) Summary of Selected Legislation Pertaining to Commercialism in Public Schools; and (2) Extended Discussion of Forms of Commercial Activity in Schools. (Contains 1 figure and 86 notes.) [This paper was written with Shannon Hodge, Elizabeth Jansma, Zoe Palitz, and Linda Rangel.]

In the context of the last two years' recession, parents, teachers and administrators seem to increasingly welcome school-business "partnerships" that they hope may help ward off program cuts. Businesses encourage such arrangements because school-based marketing and advertising programs are perfectly poised to "brand" children at an early age: the school environment is relatively uncluttered, children are a captive and credulous audience, and marketing and advertising programs are normalized and lent legitimacy when they are embedded into the school context. Embedded advertising, in the forms of product placement and consumer events, is not new, but it has become the dominant advertising medium in 2010 and continues to expand. When advertising is embedded in a film, music video, or school activity, it is entwined with content that children seek out and engage with for extended periods of time. In schools, embedded advertising appears in such activities as corporate-sponsored contests, programs, lesson plans, and fundraising efforts. Students are generally unable to avoid these activities; moreover, they tend to assume that what their teachers and schools present to them is in their best interest. Adolescents, traditionally considered the least vulnerable of children, may in fact be more vulnerable than their younger counterparts because their developmental stage makes them more susceptible to embedded advertising that targets their identity formation and reduced impulse control. Most significantly, embedded advertising works--so much so that corporations are willing to spend billions of dollars on it annually. Often when stakeholders consider the pros and cons of bringing commercial programs into schools, they rationalize that children are already exposed to so much marketing and advertising in their out-of-school lives that a little more won't hurt them--particularly if it brings needed money into the schools. This report examines the psychology of embedded advertising to show how it does, in fact, both influence children's brand attitudes and harm them psychologically in a variety of ways. Advertising makes children want more, eat more, and think that their self-worth can and should come from commercial products. It heightens their insecurities, distorts their gender socialization, and displaces the development of values and activities other than those associated with commercialism. Its greatest advantage is that stakeholders, including the children themselves, discount its effectiveness. Despite the foothold that marketing and advertising currently have in schools, opposition this year in the United States, England and Ireland demonstrate that committed advocates can effectively challenge educators to evaluate and justify the commercial promotions they allow in their schools. Discussion and concern about the fairness of embedded advertising in entertainment contexts has led to talk of how to regulate it on television. Attention to and concern about embedded advertising should also inform conversations about the policies that enable school-based marketing programs and about the potential of those marketing programs to harm children. A list of websites is appended. (Contains 1 table and 132 notes.)

As part of their efforts to create a total advertising environment, companies continue to aggressively market in school to children and youth. Advertisers now routinely blur the boundaries between editorial content and advertising in an effort to thoroughly infuse childhood with marketing messages. The goal of creating a total advertising environment has been brought closer to reality through the exploitation of digital venues such as video games, social networking websites, and cell phones. This year's report considers how marketing and advertising subtly help shape children's socialization into values associated with commercialism. Although commercialism isn't explicitly included as part of the curriculum, it is taught subtly in school environments that include marketing and advertising. As marketing messages promote particular products, they simultaneously promote values that validate and support commercialism.

This year's Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends report finds that schools continue to be a prime target of a wide variety of corporate advertising efforts and criticism of marketing to children in schools is mounting. Most of this criticism is directed at marketing activities that are thought to have a negative impact on children's health. Public debate has led to government regulation and bans of commercial activity in some school districts; however, commercial interests show few serious signs of pulling back. From July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005, the Education Policy Studies Laboratory's Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University conducted media database searches in Education Index, Google News and Lexis-Nexis, and recorded a total of 5,929 media references related to schoolhouse commercialism. These references were grouped into eight categories and two supplementary searches (new to this year's report), as follows: Corporate Sponsorship of Programs and Activities; Exclusive Agreements; Incentive Programs; Appropriation of Space; Sponsored Education Materials; Electronic Marketing; Privatization; Fundraising; Children's Health (supplementary search); and Commercialism (supplementary search). [For the full report, see ED508519.]

This year's Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends report finds that schools continue to be a prime target of a wide variety of corporate advertising efforts and criticism of marketing to children in schools is mounting. Most of this criticism is directed at marketing activities that are thought to have a negative impact on children's health. Public debate has led to government regulation and bans of commercial activity in some school districts; however, commercial interests show few serious signs of pulling back. From July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005, the Education Policy Studies Laboratory's Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University conducted media database searches in Education Index, Google News and Lexis-Nexis, and recorded a total of 5,929 media references related to schoolhouse commercialism. Two appendices are included: (1) Methodology; and (2) Mean Number of Articles and the Lower and Upper Bound 95% Confidence Intervals by Category/Supplemental Search and Press. (Contains 2 figures and 137 notes.)

Schools have become integral to the marketing plans of a vast array of corporations as commercial interests--through advertising, sponsorship of curriculum and programs, marketing of consumer products, for-profit privatization, and fundraising tied to commercial entities--continue to influence public education. The trend persists despite growing criticism of--and to some degree, attempts to resist--practices that create tighter bonds between public schools and private, for-profit corporations. It is driven in large part by continued financial struggles of public school systems to meet the demands of educating children in the face of tighter resources. For the period from July 1, 2003, through June 30, 2004, media references to schoolhouse commercialism rose in 5 of 8 categories monitored by the Education Policy Studies Laboratory's Commercialism in Education Research Unit (CERU) at Arizona State University. CERU uses media references to measure schoolhouse commercialism by conducting searches on relevant terms in the media databases Education Index, Google News, and the news, marketing, and business databases of Lexis-Nexis, and counting the number of citations each search produces. Appended are: (1) Search Terms and Modifications for the 2003-2004 Trends Report: Terms for Popular, Business, and Advertising/Marketing Presses in Lexis-Nexis; (2) Search Terms and Modifications for the 2003-2004 Trends Report: Terms for Education Press in H.W. Wilson Education Index Database; and (3) Search Terms for the 2003-2004 Trends Report: Terms for Popular Press in Google News.

The Arizona Education Policy Initiative (AEPI), a collaboration of Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona, conducted a statewide telephone survey to get parents' perspectives on the condition of education in the state. From March 17 to March 27, 2004, a statewide random sample of 400 Arizona parents and an additional statewide sample of 355 Hispanic Arizona parents with children attending a traditional public, charter, or private school were interviewed. The results offer a snapshot of Arizona parent opinion in 2004. Findings reveal that Arizona parents think the schools their children attend and the teachers who teach their children are doing a good job. They report schools encourage them to be involved. Accountability gets high marks from parents and they support the AIMS (Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards) testing program. The biggest challenge facing Arizona schools is lack of money, according to parents. In the controversial area of English language instruction, parents support providing instruction in both a child's native language and in English. Although too few parents of children under six were surveyed to allow for a definitive conclusion, the results suggest that parents would utilize early education and all-day kindergarten if they were available. It is especially noteworthy that Hispanic and non-Hispanic parents hold very similar views about public education in Arizona. Appendices include: (1) Survey Methods; (2) Survey Questions; and (3) Survey Report Tables. (Contains 46 tables and 8 notes.)

The for-profit management of public schools by for-profit corporations continues to be a controversial innovation. Proponents argue for-profit schools will result in educational improvement by harnessing the profit seeking motive of the marketplace. Competition, they maintain, forces companies to earn their profits by reducing administrative inefficiency, hiring and retaining effective administrators and teachers, introducing and refining educational innovations, and thus producing gains in student achievement superior to those of regular public schools. While private sector companies have always transacted business with, and profited from selling supplies and equipment to schools, the idea of managing and administering K-12 publicly funded schools with the intent of making profits is relatively new. Seeing the similarities with health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that manage the health care process, Wall Street has used the term ?EMO? or ?education management organization,? to describe for-profit companies involved in the management and administration of public schools.

This report discusses commercialism in schools and its possible connection to student health. Sections of the report are titled as follows: "The Context in Which School Commercialism Flourishes"; "Schoolhouse Commercialism: Marketing Methods"; "Nutrition-Related Marketing in Schools"; "Exclusive Agreements with Soft Drink Bottlers: Two Examples"; "Schools' Dilemma: Money or Health"; "The Money Children Spend"; "Health Policy Implications of Schoolhouse Commercialism"; "Community Opposition"; "Professional Guidelines"; "Legislation"; "Litigation"; and "The Research Needed." The report concludes that as recently as 20 years ago, there was a broad national consensus that public education should be free of commercial pressure on students. Research has documented, however, that pressure on schools to permit a broad array of marketing activities is now intense and pervasive. Appended are examples of school commercialism; examples of nutrition-related commercialism; and a summary of federal and state health-related legislation. (Contains 62 references.) (WFA)

This report details the seven categories tracked by the Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education (CACE) between 1990 and 1999-2000: sponsorship of programs and activities, exclusive agreements, incentive programs, appropriation of space, sponsored educational materials, electronic marketing, and privatization. The 1999-2000 report added an 8th category: fundraising. The total number of press citations found in CACE's database searches increased 23 percent between 1998-99 and 1999-2000. Commercial activities in schools appear to be continuing the upward trend observed throughout the 1990s. Furthermore, the growing interconnection of schoolhouse commercializing suggests that marketers are attempting to create a seamless advertising environment that surrounds children in and out of school. The drive to put technology in schools appears to be opening new channels for commercial activity in schools. In spite of the apparent increase in commercial activity, signs of disenchantment are beginning to emerge. Increasing attempts at the local, state, and federal levels to regulate or ban certain types of commercial activities are another indication of a developing public awareness of potential negative consequences of such activities. An appendix contains sources, search strategies, and search terms. (Contains 139 references.) (DFR)

The Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) is a statewide effort in Wisconsin to increase the academic achievement of children living in poverty by reducing the student-teacher ratio in kindergarten through third grade to 15:1. Schools participating in SAGE are also required to implement a rigorous curriculum, provide before- and after-school activities, and implement professional development plans. In 1998-1999, the SAGE evaluation considered 131 kindergarten, 143 first-grade, 143 second-grade, and 139 third-grade classrooms enrolling 2,303 kindergartners, 2,508 first graders, 2,493 second graders, and 2,572 third graders. Academic achievement was measured through achievement tests administered in grades 1, 2, and 3, and case studies were conducted in three SAGE schools. As had been found in 1997-1998, test scores of SAGE and comparison schools for first graders showed statistically higher performance of SAGE students in language arts, mathematics, and total scores. African American students made significantly higher gains through the school year, closing the achievement gap. Results for grades 2 and 3 generally followed the same pattern. Case studies, observations, and teacher and principal questionnaire responses all supported the positive effects of the SAGE program on classroom environment. All SAGE schools were implementing more rigorous curricula, staff development, and the "lighted schoolhouse" activities of before- and after-school programs. (Contains 58 tables and 11 references.) (SLD)

This report describes exclusive contractual agreements between businesses and public education agencies. It cites such examples as contracts between school districts and soft drink manufacturers, terming them "schoolhouse commercialism." It also provides data that explain why schools are so attractive to advertisers, and the reasons why schools "are in it for the money" as well. This is not an American phenomenon; it has spread outside the United States to Europe and Latin America. The report lists opposition to schoolhouse commercialism both in this country and abroad, as well as focused opposition to Channel One for its advertising and commercial use. The report also describes opposition to for-profit public schools, such as the Edison Project and Beacon Education Management. The growth of schoolhouse commercialism in the period 1997-98 to 1998-99 is explored, including sponsorship of programs and activities and the placing of advertising on school menus. An appendix contains sources, search strategies, search terms, and data tables. (Contains 123 references.) (DFR)

In 1998, the Keystone Research Center published a comprehensive review of research on two high-profile ideas for raising educational achievement: lowering class size in the early grades and instituting private school vouchers. This report presents a research update, emphasizing results since early 1998. Over the past 2 years, the evidence on the achievement benefits of lowering class size in grades K-3 has grown stronger. The report discusses the Tennessee Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio program and the Wisconsin Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program. Evidence that private school vouchers raise student achievement remains weak. This report discusses the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program--two programs dealing with voucher issues. It also discusses implications of reducing class size for Pennsylvania. (Contains 85 references.) (DFR)

This paper focuses on how, by reinforcing and exploiting the emphasis on electronic technologies in school reform, marketers are integrating school children into the advertising and marketing system. The ZapMe! program is a for-profit venture that proposes to derive its profits from activities that link the academic activities of schools and the marketing activities of corporations in a seamless web. The ZapMe! Corporation provides computer labs and Internet access to K-12 schools in return for advertising or promotional access to students and their families, is used to illustrate how technology and commercialism are being linked in school reform. The following problematic aspects and policy issues related to the ZapMe! program are described: (1) hardware and software provided by ZapMe! may not be the best or most appropriate; (2) the financial relationship between ZapMe! and corporations that provide educational content raises the issue of bias; (3) the extent to which ZapMe! is used for required lessons is the degree to which students are forced by school authorities to view certain favored commercials; (4) the provision of student demographic information to special interest raises privacy concerns; (5) ZapMe! requires that participating schools provide use of its equipment during after-school hours for community education, corporate training and/or testing purposes; (6) schools are required to distribute marketing materials designed by ZapMe! sponsors for students to take home with them; and (7) ZapMe! Points Program prizes are sent directly to students' homes. (Contains 19 references and a flow chart explaining the process.)(MES)

The Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program is a statewide effort in Wisconsin to increase the academic achievement of children living in poverty by reducing the student-teacher ratio in kindergarten through grade 3 to 15:1. This report is the second of five annual evaluation reports. During the 1997-1998 school year, the SAGE evaluation added 113 second-grade classrooms to the original 30 SAGE schools and the 84 kindergartens, 96 first grades, and 5 mixed grade classrooms studied initially. In 1998-99, the third-grade classrooms at these schools were to be added. Academic achievement will be assessed at these schools through the 2000-2001 school year. The academic achievement of these students was studied through standardized tests administered at grades other than kindergarten. First-grade students in SAGE schools achieved significantly higher scores than students in comparison classrooms in all tested subjects (mathematics, reading, and language arts). Although African American SAGE students scored below comparisons in the pretest, they made significantly larger gains than comparison school students from pretest to post-test. The achievement advantage appeared to continue in grade 2, but did not increase significantly. Interviews with teachers, classroom observations, and teacher logs showed positive aspects of SAGE classrooms. Teachers thought they had greater knowledge of their students with more individualized instruction time, and they were required to spend less time in class management. Instruction was mainly teacher-centered. The implications for smaller class size for instruction and achievement are discussed. The teacher interview guide is attached. (Contains 62 tables and 10 references.) (SLD)

This report analyzes commercializing trends in America's schools and classrooms, using data from database searches in seven categories of schoolhouse commercialism in the period 1990-97. The number of citations relating to commercializing activities can provide only a rough approximation of the scope and development of the phenomenon. The number of citations reporting commercial activities in the schools has increased 154 percent--suggesting that the 1990s have become the decade of sponsored schools and commercialized classrooms. The largest area of schoolhouse commercialism appears to be sponsorship of programs and activities (199 percent increase). The fastest growing commercial activity appears to be exclusive agreements between schools and bottlers, sports apparel manufacturers, and other firms (495 percent increase). An emerging category of school commercialism is electronic marketing, which includes television, radio, and the Internet/World Wide Web. The categories of sponsored educational materials and incentive programs are well-established commercial categories. The number of citations describing sponsored educational materials grew 313 percent. Despite the pervasiveness of commercialism and its growth, the education press has had virtually nothing to say about the issue. An appendix lists sources, search strategies, search terms, and data tables. (Contains 101 references.) (DFR)

The Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program is a statewide effort in Wisconsin to increase the academic achievement of children living in poverty by eventually reducing the student-teacher ratio in kindergarten through grade 3 to 15:1. During 1995-1996, the Sage program was implemented in 30 schools in 21 school districts. Over the course of the year, it involved 3,614 students and 220 teachers in 190 kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. Other components of the SAGE program are rigorous curriculum, staff development, and the "lighted schoolhouse" program of before and after school activities. Thirty SAGE schools were compared with 16 comparison schools. Standardized test results were used to study the academic achievement of first graders; kindergarten students did not take standardized tests. The program was evaluated through teacher questionnaires and observations. Taken together, teacher interviews, classroom observations, teacher activity logs, and teacher questionnaires provide a picture of teaching and learning in a 15:1 student-teacher ratio classroom. Discipline and classroom management problems were greatly reduced in SAGE classes, and increased instructional time was available. Although all teachers said some changes had taken place in their instructional approaches, a major change in classroom events was not observed through the school year. Nor was there the swing toward student-centered teaching that might be expected as a result of reduced class size. Teacher and principal responses to questionnaire items about rigorous curriculum and staff development are summarized. Twenty of the SAGE schools reported an increase in participation in lighted schoolhouse activities, and 3 reported a decrease in participation. (Contains 45 tables.) (SLD)