Public education professionals seem to have assumed that their "message" is being shared and received by the various publics associated with their schools. Societal and political concerns with and demands upon public education indicate a significant lack of confidence in our public schools. "School choice" and "competition" plans are the result of this concern and displeasure with the current state of our public education system. Had school districts adequately communicated its plan, purpose, and goals to its various publics the advocates of "school choice" and "competition" may not have had such a receptive audience. However, the "choice" era is upon us. Public school education must make plans to address this initiative. The definition of "school choice" as used in this paper is that of the 1991 Massachusetts School Choice law. Specifically, any child who is a resident may attend any Massachusetts public school whose district participates in the program. The major goal of this study was to undertake research regarding plans that identified "participating" and "non-participating" Metropolitan Boston communities have made to address public perceptions of their school systems. This study was composed of two phases. The first phase involved the administration of the Public Relations Oberg-West Easy Scoring Sheet (PROWESS) to fifty selected superintendents of "choice" and "non-choice" Metropolitan Boston public school systems. Phase 2 of the study involved a more detailed study of a "choice" and "non-choice" school system. A superintendent from a "choice" and "non-choice" system volunteered to participate in a guided interview. Four conclusions resulted from the research. (1) Decisions to participate in school choice tend to be made based on financial considerations, decisions of neighboring communities and geographic location, (2) systems opting to participate in choice tend to have better prepared public relations materials and share information with their community more effectively than do "non-choice" systems, (3) school systems have not adequately planned and implemented school public relations plans and procedures, and (4) staff and administrative involvement in the school system's public relations activities was significantly less in "non-choice" than in "choice" systems. The study makes the following recommendations: (1) school systems must plan and implement a formal public relations plan for their systems, (2) school systems should identify staff members who will be responsible for planning, overseeing, implementing and evaluating the system's public relations plan, (3) "non-choice" school systems should begin to plan for their eventual involvement in school choice, (4) school administrators should treat staff as the most important audience when planning and developing a school public relations plan, and (5) school systems must develop strategies to involve that large majority of the community having no ties to public education.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8907 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Nazzaro, Edmund John |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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