Essentials Magazine Essentials Spring 2019 | Page 8

From The Marketing Side
schools are predominantly white or
nonwhite. His first article is entitled
United States Spends $23 Billion More
on White Schools than Nonwhite.
According to EdBuild, an analysis of
the local and state tax revenue spent in
the 2015-16 school year shows non-
white school districts receiving $2,226
less funding per student than white
districts.
The report also states, “There are
over 13,000 traditional public school
systems in the United States, serving
an average of 3,500 students. Howev-
er, the average high-poverty nonwhite
district serves almost 10,500 students
— a student body that is three times
larger than the national average.
Primarily white districts, on the other
hand, enroll only 1,500 students on av-
erage and high-poverty white districts
are even smaller.”
A second EdWeek article by the
same author is entitled School Spend-
ing is Broken. So Why Is it So Hard
to Replace Funding Formulas? In
it he writes, “The way states distrib-
ute billions of dollars in school aid
is counterproductive, outdated, and
inefficient, according to a growing
number of politicians, school finance
experts, practitioners, and advocates…
Without the courts pressuring states
to fork more money over to schools…
governors and legislatures, it turns
out, don’t have the political capital or
revenue to do it on their own.”
A Stagnant Education Market
According to the National Center
for Education Statistics, there is no sig-
nificant enrollment growth in the near
future. One of the challenges we face
as school marketers is how to achieve
growth in a stagnant market. It makes
sense that if we consider all schools
equally qualified as potential buyers
our profit and loss statements will look
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8 essentials | spring 2019
“No Child Left Behind
was a program intended to
bring equality to our educa-
tion system, but it did exactly
the opposite.”
as stagnant as the projected enrollment
growth. However, if we focus on the
schools that have the most money, and
in particular that have the most in dis-
cretionary funds, we stand a chance to
improve our company financials.
Location, Location, Location
All the major education databases
have a selection that rates the afflu-
ence of the community in which a
school is located. They also have selec-
tions regarding the ethnic composition
of the student population. Interesting-
ly, in most cases this data comes from
the United States census and not from
the compilation of data from districts
and schools themselves.
Whereas my experience with the
selection of community affluence has
been very positive, my experience with
the selection of expenditure per pupil
has not. My conclusion? Success is not
about the demographics of the school.
It is about the demographics of where
the school is located. n
BOB STIMOLO, EDmarket’s Official
School Market Consultant, is President
of School Market Research Institute a full
service marketing
and research firm.
SMRI provides
direct mail and
email lists and
services exclu-
sively to school
marketers. To
learn more go
to www.smriinc.
com or contact
Kathleen Bill at 800-838-3444 x201.