It was the school news story made in heaven: Districtwide scores on the Stanford Achievement Test went from the 75th to the 95th percent-ile over one school year. But school officials in Liberty, Mo., instead saw the miraculous rise in scores as a potential public relations nightmare. Would the press question the results as too good to be true?
Liberty's worries over media coverage are typical of school districts across the United States during a time when public interest in education is high. Out of necessity, school officials are learning to hone their public relations skills with the help of increasingly media-savvy communication officers.
In recent years, the relationship between the media and schools has often been fraught with tensions and problems, educators and media experts agree. Superintendents, principals, and teachers, under pressure to reform schools and raise test scores, often mistrust a reporter's ability or willingness to lay out the nuances of an education story, whether it's about academic performance or school renovation.
On the other hand, members of the press seeking to get a story under deadline often complain about limited access to schools or school officials who are less than forthcoming with information.
The Case of Liberty
For Liberty Public Schools, a small but growing suburban district near Kansas City, Mo., officials decided to move quickly to find out the reasons for the test score jump.
"The superintendent took me out to lunch and said, 'We have a problem with the test scores,'" recalls Jim Dunn, Liberty's director of communications services.
By involving the testing company and school personnel in the probe, "We found a pretest had been given to students that was just too similar to the real test," says Dunn.
Before the local media could pounce on the story as a cheating scandal, Dunn sent notes to parents, then visited several news-paper editors with the information.
"I tried to be up-front as soon as possible," says Dunn.
What the school district's investigation discovered was that an assistant principal had made a pretest to help students do better. "She was shocked when it was presented as 'cheating,'" says Dunn. "Pretests have always been used to help prepare students" for standardized tests.
Liberty school authorities told the media that there was no intention to cheat and that they would not "name names" and "place blame." They also threw out the offending test scores.
The test score story made the metro section of the Kansas City Star and the local media. The stories, however, did not give Liberty schools the black-eye that some districts have suffered for similar mishaps. In fact, the weekly Liberty Sun-News later wrote an editorial commending the school superintendent's actions in the potential crisis as "an excellent example of honest government."
Curing Memphis's Blues
It's the systemwide story that gets more negative coverage that's "dramatic, emotional, and ongoing," says Janice Crawford, executive director of communications for Memphis City Schools. Memphis's school reform efforts over the last five years have generated heated division among the city's educators, with a host of news stories chronicling the developments.
Only now, as the school board decides on a superintendent to replace departed reformer Gerry House, have the changes been accepted as necessary, says Crawford. Along the way, Crawford learned about the importance of getting out the message of the school district's vision despite contrary press coverage or editorials.
"Schools that rely on the press solely to create understanding about change in schools are making a serious mistake. The press sets the agenda—and they can kill you—but people cement their opinions in other ways," says Crawford.
Face-to-face meetings with principals and teachers, community leaders, and parents can help build support for positive change, says Crawford. "Schools shouldn't under-estimate their own ability to be a player in shaping public opinion."
Improving Public Relations
A number of issues have intensified the focus on education, says Karen Kleinz, associate director of the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA). Moreover, during an election year in which education has been a major focus, "the public wants to know more about where their tax dollars are spent," she says.
So the press and the public are examining the state of the public schools through the lenses of academic achievement, overcrowding, building conditions, and safety, says Kleinz.
To help school districts tell their stories better, the NSPRA audits school districts' communication plans to look for potential improvements. It's a service that has seen increasing demand in recent years, Kleinz says.
Anne Meek, an education consultant in Norfolk, Va., and author of the ASCD book Communicating with the Public: A Guide for School Leaders, says school administrators need to deal with the media in savvy ways and must agree on the roles different officials should take in speaking with the media.
Meek suggests the following steps to guide administrators when discussing school performance and other education stories with the media:
- Be prepared ahead of time with accumulated test data for the past two, five, or 20 years. Then, even if test scores take a dip they can be seen in context.
- Prepare a news release, whether the scores are good, bad, or indifferent, and include in it other aspects of achievement. "Find other academic measures to brag about, and then brag about them," says Meek. But also detail the plans to address achievement issues.
- Always tell the truth; you won't get ahead if you fudge.
- When it comes to bad news, such as asbestos, a gun found, or the transgressions of school personnel, keep the information focused on policy but not specific people.
- For camera interviews, prepare by rehearsing with another school staff member. During the actual interview, when you've said what you need to say, stop talking, and the cameras will stop rolling.
Finally, says Meek, administrators can soften the negative effect of disappointing district test scores by focusing on a compelling case study of a student or group of students who are succeeding.
What You Need to Know About the Media
At many newspapers in the past, reporting on schools and education was not considered the most glamorous assignment, say those following school issues in the media.
Often green reporters were rotated through the schools beat for quick stints, so that little continuity and relationship-building could take place, says Mickie Anderson, a special projects reporter who recently covered the ongoing reform of Memphis schools for the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
"It takes a year to get grounded in all the different education issues, especially in an urban district, because there you have all the social issues, as well, that impact education—poverty, homelessness, crime," says Anderson.
In the 1980s, newspapers started doing reader polls to find out what readers wanted. More news on schools was high on readers' lists, says Anderson. Suddenly education was hot.
Gene Maeroff, a former national education correspondent for The New York Times, agrees that education news is now given higher priority in the media than in the past. Maeroff directs the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University.
"I think [education reporting] has increased, and it has gotten better," says Maeroff. More papers are increasing the number of reporters on their education staffs, assigning more experienced people to education, and keeping them on the beat for longer periods, he points out.
While some newspapers may allow a reporter the time to do in-depth education articles, others "expect education reporters to turn out almost a story a day and do not give them the time they should have to do a good job," Maeroff says.
But news coverage can't be all school carnivals and science fairs. "What makes news above all else are anomalies," says Maeroff. "For the most part, schools don't have violence or other problems, so when something happens, it's news."
Maeroff cautions that it's "misguided" for educators to think that such stories won't get covered. But he concedes that local television reporting of school news tends not to be thorough or in-depth, instead being "driven by sound bites and ratings."
Nonetheless, Maeroff urges school administrators to keep the flow of information to the press transparent and avoid the "no comment" retort because it's a missed opportunity to get out their viewpoints.
Schools can also learn how to pitch the "good news" story more expertly, he says.
"Educators should try to do a better job about saying why it's a good story: What's different about this? What can they tell a reporter about how this fits into trends regionally and nationally?" advises Maeroff.
"No matter how good a reporter is, and no matter how conscientious, the reporter's job is not to do PR for the school. If it were, then what they write would not be credible," says Maeroff. "Even educators would question the credibility of such reporting."
Resources
Communicating with the Public: A Guide for School Leaders
Anne Meek, who once led communications for Virginia Beach City Public Schools, offers specific strategies for dealing with various sectors of the public, from parents to community leaders and the media, in her book Communicating with the Public: A Guide for School Leaders.
To order a copy, call ASCD at 800–933–2723.
National School Public Relations Association
15948 Derwood Rd.
Rockville, MD 20855
Web site: nspra@nspra.org.
301–519–0496; fax: 301–519–0494
The NSPRA has been helping schools in the United States and Canada improve communication with the public and media since 1935 through its annual seminar, regional workshops, publications, and on-site audits of a school's or district's communication plan.
The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media
Teachers College, Columbia University
525 West 120th Street
New York, NY 10027–6696
212–678–4197; fax 212–678–8240
E-mail: hechinger@columbia.edu
The Hechinger Institute runs training seminars for journalists and editors responsible for education coverage as well as seminars for educators to help them understand the role of the media. Its publication, A Journalist's Primer on Access to Schools, offers insights on school-media relations from educators and education reporters.
