As schools continue to integrate technologies into every aspect of school life, those technologies are being harnessed to amplify corporate marketing and profit-making, extending the reach of commercializing activities into every aspect of students' school lives. Although marketers' school-focused efforts are often billed as "innovative"…

There is a lot of money to be made from marketing to children. Children make spending decisions about their own cash, they influence their parents' spending decisions--and they have their whole purchasing lives ahead of them. For these reasons, marketers have, over the years, done everything they can to create a "360-degree" marketing…

Many states and communities are in chronic fiscal crisis. It is no surprise that beleaguered educators are ever more open to offers of corporate "partnerships" that might bring in additional money for their schools. Unfortunately, many school-business partnerships are little more than marketing arrangements that have few benefits for…

Over the past several decades, schools have faced increasing pressure to "partner" with businesses, both to be seen as responsive to the business community and out of the hope that partnerships would help make up budget shortfalls as states reduced public funding for education. Often, school-business partnerships are little more than…

This policy brief describes the growth of schoolhouse advertising and marketing activities in the last few decades, assesses the harms associated with commercial activities in schools, and provides advocates, policymakers, and educators with a policy framework and model legislative language designed to protect children and the integrity of…

In the context of the last two years' recession, parents, teachers and administrators seem to increasingly welcome school-business "partnerships" that they hope may help ward off program cuts. Businesses encourage such arrangements because school-based marketing and advertising programs are perfectly poised to "brand" children…

Explains that financially strapped and resource-poor schools often accept corporate-sponsored educational materials and ads, especially when they come with free computers or other resources, discussing how corporations use schools to boost brand loyalty; how commercialism undermines the health of students (e.g., soda machines in schools, which…

The Simon Property Group, United States' largest mall developer, since 1998 has partnered with local public school systems to open 19 alternative public schools in malls in 11 states through its nonprofit Simon Youth Foundation. Lafayette Square's school, with a 200-student capacity is the newest and largest, which according to a watchdog group,…

For the last 15 years, the Education Policy Studies Laboratory has studied trends in schoolhouse commercialism and has found that this practice is increasingly pervasive and diverse. The manifestations of marketing in public schools include incentive programs, such as Pizza Hut's "Book It!" program; contracts that grant soft drink and junk food…

Given the importance of educating for democratic citizenship, the involvement of individual business people with policymaking bodies and task forces is highly desirable. However, schools should limit business involvement to civic-minded contributions free of marketing or advertising hype. To do otherwise betrays the spirit of educational…

Discusses the misperception that public schools are failing and that the system should be opened to competition. Looks at Channel One, educational vouchers, and the current period of corporate dominance in educational reform. (JOW)

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…