Public Education's PR Problem

Last week a New York Times opinion piece by Jessica Grose presented a conclusion that was not exactly news to those of us in the education world-- despite the loud yawling from the vicinity of the parents rights area, parents in this country are mostly happy with their children's schools.

In fact, despite the pandemic-related chaos, according to Gallup, more parents were satisfied with the quality of education being received by their children than were satisfied in 2013 or 2006. And that leads us to this not-shocking revelation:

Digging deeper into the Gallup numbers revealed that the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them: Overall, only 46 percent of Americans are satisfied with schools. Democrats, “women, older adults and lower-income Americans are more likely than their counterparts to say they are satisfied with K-12 education,” Gallup found.

That plays out across and within states, and in other polls. It has been this way for years--people mostly trust and like their local schools.

Scratch the local wave of critics and attackers, and you mostly find people who don't actually have children in the school district (or, sometimes, in any school at all). That points to a productive tactic for those who want to dismantle public education, but it also points to a problem that public schools need to address.

Public schools are terrible at any kind of basic PR.

I was hit by this when I retired. When you're in the public school bubble, you're deeply aware, all the time, of what's going on in the school, right down to the day by day flow. When I retired, I expected that outside the bubble, I expected to be less aware, but even I was surprised at how little information makes it outside that bubble. 

School districts are mostly terrible at--well, let's not even call it PRT. Let's just call it the basic business of letting people know what is going on inside the schools. 

Web pages are the worst kind of barely functional Web 1.0 online brochures. Critics of a district can seem to dominate social media because the local district isn't there at all. Public schools may rarely appear in local media except when something dreadful happens. And a school district's outreach may depend on the luck of the draw--does their just happen to be someone on staff who likes doing that stuff?

There are a few potential causes.

One is that folks inside the public school bubble simply don't realize how little information makes it outside that bubble. They are soaking in it every day, and they just don't see that they're swimming in a tiny fenced off pool and not the ocean.

Another is the institutional version of "just close the door and do my job," which was a perfectly fine approach a few decades ago, but is not enough for the 21st century. "I'm just going to do my job and y'all are going to have to trust me," was never a great stance, but it's absolutely unsustainable now. You may not want to talk about your work, but a whole lot of other people do, and they're going to hold that conversation whether you bother to show up or not. 

It's understandable. For decades, school boards couldn't get the public to show up if they were handing out fifty dollar bills. Teachers considered it a miracle if more than three parents showed up for open house. But times have changed. Waiting for the public to come to you isn't enough.

I'm critical of the many bizarre non-teaching positions that have appeared in the world of education, but your district needs somebody to serve as some sort of public information point person. Someone who walks through the school, takes a picture, and puts up at least one "Here's what's happening in the school today" post. Someone who maintains the web site so that it's actually useful. Someone who peppers your local media with releases about school stuff. Someone who can come up with creative ways to get information outside the bubble to the taxpayers who don't currently have tied to people within the bubble. 

There are other factors that I recognize are open to debate. I'm a small town guy and a big proponent of living in the community where you teach, or at least adjacent (we were a two-district couple when we married). I know there are teachers who want to do their jobs then go home and never encounter students or families outside of school; I'm not sure that's a useful stance in this day and age. And after a string of faceless commuting admins in my own district, I am more adamant than ever that school administrators must be well-known public faces in their district. The best counter to "Those people are indoctrinatin' our kids with evil ideas" remains "I know that guy, and he doesn't strike me as someone who would do such evil things."

It's not just transparency--though school districts need that too. But as schools too well know, transparency, like an open window, only accomplishes something if people look. Let's call what we need active transparency-- not just making what happens in school visible to those who look, but pushing the visibility out there.

Will this end the current onslaught? Of course not. Some of the leaders of these waves of attacks are acting in bad faith, some are political opportunists, and some are the same old folks looking for any excuse to dismantle public education. But there are also plenty of people in your community who mean well and want schools to be good but whose only information has come from public school opponents. 

It's right there in the data above--people who are familiar with the local school mostly approve of it. Doesn't mean the schools are perfect. Doesn't mean that the majority don't have a legit beef. But those who know and approve of the school didn't have to be fed some kind of sophisticated marketing blather--they just had to see what the school is doing. Extend that sight outside the bubble. Not only is it good for the health and support of the school, but taxpayers deserve to know that the dysfunction-centered hollering they hear is not the whole story.