A school-focused commercializing process over 100 years in the making has been turbo-charged by the rise of data-collecting digital educational platforms and a pandemic that has forced widespread use of distance learning. Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger explain how advertising to students creates what John Dewey would call "mis-educative…

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…

The 2009-2010 school year marked another year of relatively slow growth in the for-profit education management industry. The greatest increase in profiled companies occurred in the category of small EMOs (education management organizations) (i.e., EMOs that manage three or fewer schools). The authors believe their key finding from the 2007-2008…

Education management organizations, or EMOs, emerged in the early 1990s in the context of widespread interest in so-called market-based school reform proposals. Wall Street analysts coined the term EMO as an analogue to health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Proponents of EMOs claim that they bring a much needed dose of entrepreneurial spirit…

The merits of a marketplace model for public education have been among the most prominent themes in education policy discussions over the last two decades. Advocates of market approaches to education reform contend that creating a market in educational services will foster competition among providers and thus spur delivery of better services at…

This annual report, in its seventh edition, found that Education Management Organizations (EMOs) tend to focus on managing charter primary schools and on enrolling relatively large numbers of students in those schools. Fifty-nine EMOs operate in 24 states and the District of Columbia, enrolling some 239,766 students. The report is the most…

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…

Tainted by failure, rooted in myth, and marked by questionable practice, public-private partnerships in education are risky. Performance contracting failed miserably in the 1970s. Faulty privatization rationales include myths surrounding SAT test scores and the "bloated bureaucracy" and "money doesn't matter" arguments. Neither…

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…

Summary of the "Fifth Annual Report of Trends in Schoolhouse Commercialism" prepared by the Educational Policy Studies Laboratory's Commercialism in Education Research Unit at Arizona State University (www.schoolcommercialism.org). Includes discussion of program and activity sponsorships, exclusive agreements, incentive programs,…

The Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Schools found that the number of press citations from 1990 to 2000 discussing seven types of commercializing activities (program sponsorship, exclusive agreements, incentive programs, appropriation of space, sponsored educational materials, electronic marketing, privatization, and fund raising)…

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…

In the probusiness 1980s, marketing and public-relations schemes were characterized as legitimate contributions to the curriculum, helpful teaching aids, or effective school-business cooperation models. By the late 1980s, commercialism in schools had become so rampant that Channel One was regarded as a school-reform proposal. Today, profit-making…

This essay reviews the history of school commercialization in the USA and the forms that it has taken over time, with particular attention paid to research measuring the scope and variety of commercialization trends in US public schools. The implications of commercialization activities such as those that promote the consumption of nutritionally…

The two students who won commercial sponsorship for their college education embody entrepreneurialism's darker side-the growing commercialism of schools and conscious targeting of students as lifelong consumers. This update discusses developments in program, activity, and materials sponsorships; exclusive agreements; electronic marketing;…