Cómo eran las carabelas?

The primary purpose of this study is to examine whether public school leaders, in comparison with charter school leaders, are responding to the new competitive marketplace of school choice by utilizing school websites as marketing platforms to promote their schools to current and prospective stakeholders. This chapter reviews the literature that informed this study, beginning with a broad overview of the limited existing research on education marketing at the compulsory school level and followed by a closer focus on studies examining the purpose and uses of institutional websites in the American educational system.

Section one summarizes the literature exploring the dichotomy between the increased acceptance and use of education marketing by school leaders in response to the competitive educational marketplace and the dearth of existing academic research examining the implications of this increasingly common leadership practice.

Section two offers a synopsis of education marketing research prior to 2012 by examining the major themes identified in Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown’s seminal and comprehensive literature review entitled “The Research on School Marketing: Current Issues and Future Directions –An Updated Version.” Their review of existing

education marketing studies prior to 2012 emphasizes the dilemma facing school leaders who believe both that education marketing is an “indispensible organizational activity for competing schools” but also that marketing as a philosophy and in practice

is incompatible with the values and goals of public education (Oplatka and Hemsley- Brown, 2012, p. 6).

While almost the entirety of education marketing research prior to 2012 emanated from outside of the United States, there has been a recent emergence of academic study in the United States, culminating in the 2016 volume of Peabody Journal of Education entitled “Marketing and Public Education: Evidence, Emerging Trends, and Implications.” Section three of this literature review examines the major thematic similarities and differences between the pre-2012 international education marketing research, as synthesized in Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown’s review, and the studies published in the United States between 2012 and 2016. Most significantly, the American studies do not identify the leadership dilemma emphasized by Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown but instead focus primarily on how American school leaders can and do utilize marketing to inequitably target and exclude particular students for

enrollment.

Section four offers a brief overview of the emergence, acceptance, and institutionalization of marketing in American higher education as a framework to consider both the current status and future development of education marketing in the American school system. Section four includes a synopsis of the literature on the marketing purposes and outcomes of view books and websites in higher education that inform this study’s analysis of the marketing potential of public and charter school websites.

Section five more specifically contextualizes this study with an analysis of the existing research on the marketing purposes of prospectuses and websites at the

compulsory school level. The research identifies the school prospectus as a precursor to the school website and offers insights about how school leaders have valued and utilized marketing materials in response to competitive educational markets internationally that predate the marketization of the American school system. The limited earlier literature on school websites focused primarily on the operational purposes and effectiveness of school websites while more recent studies have critically examined the marketing purposes of school websites in inequitably targeting particular types of students and families.

Section six concludes the literature review by summarizing the existing research on education marketing and highlights the need for future research on the marketing practices of school leaders.

An Existing Dichotomy: The Use and Study of Education Marketing

Marketing as a leadership response to the new marketplace. As the

educational landscape in the United States continues to transform into a system based on the market incentives of competition and choice, schools leaders, especially those in urban areas, are increasingly obligated to respond by purposefully competing for, attracting and retaining the necessary or desired numbers of students (Beal & Beal, 2016; Foskett, 2012; Jabbar, 2015; Jabbar, 2016; Kasman & Loeb, 2013; Lubineski, Linick, & York, 2012; Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012; Wilson & Carlsen, 2016). This competition is a relatively new mandate for many public school leaders in the United States, who historically have been provided a stable number of students in legislated districts (Beal and Beal, 2016; DiMartino & Jessen, 2014). However, as the number of voucher programs and charter schools have grown annually both in the nation and in

North Carolina, public school leaders must begin to learn and understand how to

navigate within this new system to compete for the enrollment of the children who now possess a choice of schools (Burnell, 2012; Lubineski, Linick, & York, 2012). As Foskett (2012) observes, “Responding to policy change and changing external environments is a key characteristic of leadership and management in all organizations, and the

ideological project of ‘marketization’ demanded direct response from those providing institutional strategic and operational leadership” (p. 41).

For public school leaders engaged in direct competition with charter and private schools (and sometimes even with other public schools) for the enrollment of children in their communities, the necessity exists that their schools be considered the best and right choices for families and their children (Beal & Beal, 2016; Bunnell, 2012; Jabbar, 2016; Wilson and Carlsen. 2016). A number of direct responses are available for school leaders seeking to enhance the desirability of their schools in comparison to rival or neighboring schools. School leaders can pursue facility, budgetary, safety, curricular, technology, faculty, and equity initiatives to improve the performance and

attractiveness of their schools (Beal & Beal, 2016; Kasman & Loeb, 2013; Loeb, Valant, & Kasman, 2011). However, such academic and operational investments are

potentially, and typically, expensive, time-consuming, difficult to achieve and often strongly resisted by school communities (Kasman & Loeb, 2013; Lubineski, Linick, & York, 2012). Instead, school leaders in competitive markets increasingly are exploring and utilizing traditional marketing strategies to better promote the existing strengths, unique features, future initiatives and overall missions of their individual schools to current and prospective stakeholders (Beal & Beal, 2016; Bunnell, 2012; DiMartino &

Jessen, 2014; Jabbar, 2015; Jabbar, 2016; Holme, Carkhum & Rangel, 2013; Kasman & Loeb, 2013; Loeb, Valant, & Kasman, 2011; Lubineski, Linick, & York, 2012; Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012). One potential marketing platform available to school leaders, and the focus of this study, is the school website, which is the “most widely available means that schools can use to promote themselves, with more schools using the web than any other form of public engagement” (Lubineski, Linick, & York, 2012, p. 121).

“A dearth of research attention.” Despite the increased acceptance and use of marketing by school leaders as a response to the increasingly competitive educational marketplace, academics and researchers “have paid remarkably little attention to this issue, particularly in the United States” (Bunnell, 2012, p. 102). In his 2012 analysis “Marketisation and Education Marketing: The Evolution of a Discipline and a Research Field,” Foskett (2012) describes education marketing as a “new field” of academic study that was “largely terra incognita prior to the mid-1980’s” (p. 40). In the past three decades, Foskett (2012) includes himself as part of “a small group of academics and practitioners” who have contributed “understanding and insight” to the field but notes that the academic study of education marketing still lacks a “framework of analysis or conceptualization” (p. 41). Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown (2012) similarly conclude that the study of education marketing is an emerging scholarship that remains “un-

synthesized and un-theorized”with “an extremely limited number of studies that have been conducted” (p. 4). The lack of research is surprising to Oplatka (2002), given the “considerable interest in the issues of parental choice and the subsequent emergence of educational markets,” and the “increased popularity” of the “practice with school

academic journal dedicated entirely to education marketing at the compulsory level in the United States, editors Beal, Stewart, and Lubienski (2016) concur that there remains a critical “imbalance between the rise of this issue” and the corresponding “dearth of research attention” (p. 2).

Two potential explanations exist for the paucity of research on education

marketing in the United States. The first is that the incentivized education marketplace and the resulting competition for student enrollment are still relatively new features of the American school system. As the marketplace of American schools becomes more established, likely so too will the academic study of education marketing. For instance, several academic journals and a plethora of corresponding research are dedicated entirely to the marketing of higher education in America, which has historically existed as a competitive marketplace (Foskett, 2012). Also, a greater body of academic study exists that examines education marketing by primary and secondary schools in other countries, especially the United Kingdom, Australia, and Israel, each of which has longer maintained a competitive educational marketplace (Beal and Beal, 2016; DiMartino & Jessen, 2014; Jennings, 2010). Even in these countries, however, the study of education marketing is still considered an “emergent” field whose scholarship is “un-synthesized and un-theorized” (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p. 4; Bunnell, 2012, p. 102).

Foskett, a leading academic in the study of education marketing, proffers a second theory for the slow development of education marketing as an academic field both internationally and in the United States – that it is one consequence of the rigid ideological divide among academics about the introduction of market forces into educational systems. While acknowledging that the development of a “‘new’ research

field” is inherently difficult, Foskett (2012) emphasizes that the academic arena is not a “level playing field within which new ideas or fields of engagement are always

welcomed” (p. 59) and that particular “hegemonies and heresies, contests and competitions, allegiances and enmities … strongly influence the ways in which new ideas are able to emerge” (p. 42). In this case, academics who “regard marketization as an inappropriate philosophy and concept for education” may consider the study of education marketing to be a legitimization and an implicit approval of the philosophy and policy of marketization (Foskett, 2012, p.58). According to Foskett (2012), the assumption within academia has been that the very few researchers who have

examined education marketing necessarily ascribe to a pro-market philosophy and are thus “morally challenged” with an institutional “concern about the motives and

respectability of those undertaking research into its development” (p. 59).

Nevertheless, despite these philosophical objections by many within the academic community, Foskett (2012) believes a recognition within academia has been growing that educational markets are now a reality in the majority of the Western world and it is thus essential to study and understand how educational leaders and schools are

responding to this changing system.

Leadership Dilemma: Education Marketing Research prior to 2012

Defining education marketing. In the introduction to their seminal and comprehensive literature review of existing studies on education marketing prior to 2012, Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown (2012) begin with several useful definitions of education marketing as well as a brief outline of their vision of the “’ideal’ marketing procedures in schools” (p. 5). Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown indicate that the existing

definitions of education marketing are comparable to the ideas and concepts of marketing as practiced in the corporate and service sectors. Of the four similar

definitions of education marketing offered by the authors, the variation most specific to schools and school leadership is attributed to Davis and Ellison as “the means by which the school actively communicates and promotes its purpose, values, and products to the pupils, parents, staff, and wider community” (Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p. 6). Pursuant to this definition, the authors argue that education marketing is now an “indispensable managerial function without which the school could not survive in its current competitive environment” because it is no longer sufficient for a school to be just educationally effective, but school leaders must also “convey an effective image for parents and stakeholders” (Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p. 6).

Identifying and developing a marketing perspective. This shift in emphasis is emblematic of the transformations in other organizations that have historically engaged and appealed to their external environments. According to Oplatka and Hemsely-

Brown (2012), organizations initially prioritized a “production” perspective that focused on product development and improvement based on the assumption that buyers prefer options that offer the most features with the highest quality and best value. Eventually, this “production” perspective was supplanted by a “selling”

perspective of advertising and promotion that assumes consumers will not purchase a product, regardless of quality or value, unless producers initiate “activities to inform and persuade them to do so” (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p 6). Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown argue that neither approach is individually sufficient for the current marketplace and that organizations must instead adapt a “marketing” perspective that

simultaneously pursues the quality, availability and affordability metrics of the “production” perspective as well as the promotional and advertising mandates of the “selling” perspective. With regard to the competitive marketplace of education emerging in many Western nations, Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown (2012) believe that schools should pursue this blended marketing perspective of both developing,

promoting, and delivering high-quality, viable educational programs that also efficiently fulfill the determined “needs and wants” of students, families and other community stakeholders (p.6). A major purpose of the authors’ 2012 literature review on

education marketing was to examine the practical aspects of the ways in which school leaders and faculties understood and pursued marketing perspectives in their

organizations, operations, and external engagements.

Outlining the methodology and findings of Oplatka and Hemsely-Brown’s

review. To ensure the comprehensiveness of their literature review of education marketing studies prior to 2012, Oplatka and Hemsely-Brown searched for and identified studies utilizing a two-stage process. First, the authors utilized the bibliographies of the education marketing studies with which they were already

familiar to identify additional studies and papers with a similar purpose. Second, they sought to ensure comprehensive coverage of pertinent papers through a systematic search of library system databases and ERIC using the search terms “marketing and schools,” “educational marketing,” “marketing in education,” “markets and schools,” “marketing the schools,” “marketing and education,” “marketing the educational

institutions,” and “educational institutions and marketing.” Of the studies and papers so identified, the authors included in their review any study in which “at least one of the

purposes had been to explore the nature of marketing in elementary and/or secondary schools” (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p. 7). Literature that focused on general information about marketing, about ideal characteristics of education marketing or that focused on higher education was excluded from their review.

Utilizing these standards of inclusion and exclusion, the authors identified just 34 research studies published in the English language between 1980 and 2011 that assessed and documented “the marketing of schools in practice” (Oplatka & Hemsley- Brown, 2012, p. 8). The majority (18) of these studies were published in the 1990s in the United Kingdom following the 1988 passage of the Education Reform Act, which created a highly competitive marketplace for schools by legislating the open enrollment of students (Bunnell, 2012). Interestingly, the authors located and cited only three studies emanating from the United States prior to 2011 that focused on education marketing at the compulsory level. With such limited available research and deeming the field of education marketing to be still “in its incipient stage,” the authors did not benefit from nor produce a “universal paradigm or theory” to guide their literature review (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p. 8). However, their synthesis of major findings from the existing studies did produce two overarching themes central to defining and understanding both the practice and academic study of education

marketing at the compulsory level prior to 2012. The first is that the issue of education marketing has created new dilemmas for school leaders in that marketing is

increasingly considered an “indispensable organizational activity for competing schools” for which school leaders are typically responsible and yet, historically, “marketing as an activity is viewed negatively in education” (Oplatka & Hemsley-

Brown, 2012, p. 10). The second is that school leaders typically pursue unsystematic promotional strategies as the primary marketing activities on behalf of their schools.

Marketing is an “indispensable organizational activity.” Although the study and practice of education marketing in primary and secondary schools is still largely perceived as nascent, Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown’s (2012) literature review

determined that principals of schools in competitive marketplaces and of schools with declining enrollments heed marketing to be “a vital element in the recruitment of prospective students without which the school may not survive” (p. 11). Conversely, principals of schools in less-competitive marketplaces or of over-subscribed schools indicated “no need for marketing in their schools” (p. 11). However, those principals who were not obligated to market acknowledged that they would likely utilize

marketing practices if their schools did have to compete for student enrollment in the future. The literature review cites numerous studies that indicate that principals and school faculties recognized this marketing obligation as a “characteristic of school management” and thus primarily the responsibility of principals, although some principals expressed an expectation that faculty also should be active in marketing the school to prospective and current stakeholders (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p. 21).

Marketing counters the values and goals of public education. Although the existing research identifies a growing awareness and utilization of marketing practices among school leaders, the studies included in the Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown

literature review also document an ardent belief among many educators that marketing as a philosophy and as a practice was not compatible with the goals of education. Even

among school leaders who considered marketing to be a “vital element” of school operations and who utilized marketing practices to recruit students, widespread agreement existed that the philosophy and practice of marketing were counter to the “moral values and ethical codes” of public education (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p. 12). Principals and teachers in these studies expressed different variations of the belief that a school is a “place of teaching and learning processes” that cannot and should not be marketed like a typical business that seeks to sell finished products at the highest possible profit margin (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012, p. 11). Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown (2012) emphasized that educators frequently equated marketing to “selling” and that “misleading, even deceptive messages are inevitably embedded in market activities” (p. 12).

The leadership dilemma of education marketing. This emerging conflict between the perceived obligation to market for purposes of student enrollment in a competitive education marketplace and the longstanding resistance to marketing in the field of education by educators fostered operational and philosophical dilemmas for school principals who were typically tasked with the responsibility of school marketing. A common example of this dilemma reported in the literature concerned the leadership determination about how much energy and financial resources should be dedicated to school marketing at the expense of teaching and learning. For instance, principals in one study lamented the transferring of funds from educational activities to produce