Selling School: The Marketing of Public Education - Softcover

DiMartino, Catherine; Jessen, Sarah Butler

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807758884 ISBN 13: 9780807758885

Publisher: Teachers College Press, 2018

Synopsis

This timely book outlines the growth and development of marketing and branding practices in public education. The authors highlight why these practices have become important across key fields within public education, including leadership and governance, budgeting and finance, strategic initiatives, use of new technology, the role of teachers in marketing, and messaging. From an organizational perspective, they explore the implications of edvertising on the democratic mission of public education, especially as related to issues of equity and access for students who have been historically underserved. The authors argue that expansive marketing campaigns, unequal funding sources, and lack of regulation are quickly and profoundly reshaping public education without the benefit of robust research or public debate. Selling School is important reading for principals navigating increasingly marketized school systems, for policymakers constructing legislation, and for parents negotiating school choice.

Book Features:

• Explores the ethical tensions that emerge as a result of branding and marketing practices, specifically the application of business/private sector strategies to public education.
• Coins a new term, edvertising, that captures the breadth of marketing and branding practices within public education
• Includes a comprehensive review of the relevant literature (both business and educational) on marketing and branding.
• Highlights the actual cost of edvertising in terms of personnel and educator time.
• Calls for an increase in oversight of these new marketing practices across sectors in public education.
• Provides practical information for educators trying to understand what it means to work in highly marketized environments.
• Provides insight for parents who are trying to sift through school advertising.

About this title

Book Description

"In this comprehensive and thoughtful analysis, DiMartino and Jessen dig deep into the rise of advertising in education (or
edvertising
as they call it), thoroughly investigating incentives, actors, strategies, and content. They are right in their prescient discussion of the muddling of public and private models in public education through marketing."
—From the foreword by
Christopher Lubienski,
Indiana University, Bloomington

"This book pioneers new ground as the authors move the literature on the marketization of education into a more nuanced analysis of how branding discourses and practices, and the managerialist and neoliberal economic theories they are based on, have entered the logic of public schooling."
—
Gary L. Anderson
, New York University

“DiMartino and Jessen provide a comprehensive examination of how marketing and advertising, in tandem with school choice policies and alternative teacher and leadership pathways, have permeated the selling of schools to parents, funders, teachers, and policymakers. This book is essential for readers interested in learning about how private sector practices affect the functions of public schools.”
—
Janelle Scott
, University of California, Berkeley

From the Author

Catherine DiMartino is an associate professor in the Department of Administrative and Instructional Leadership at St. John’s University. Sarah Butler Jessen is a faculty member at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service.

About this edition

• Publisher: Teachers College Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0807758884
• ISBN 13: 9780807758885
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208