Marketing Lowell High School?

I stumbled upon an interesting article in today’s electronic edition of the Eagle Tribune (they don’t use “Lawrence” in the title anymore, but that’s another story). “School’s educate selves on marketing to lure back students” describes how the Haverhill School Department is trying to attract students who live in Haverhill but who attend other schools, both private and public, with a marketing campaign. Using ads in local newspapers and on cable TV and direct mailing to the families in Haverhill and to area real estate companies, merchants and business people, the school system is promoting the positives and confronting many of the misperceptions about Haverhill High School. Lowell should try this. The breadth and depth of the various academic, athletic and extracurricular activities at Lowell High make the school a great product to sell. And most of the fears parents have about LHS fall into the urban myth category that can be diluted if not eradicated by the application of some facts. But can you imagine the reaction if the Lowell School Department ever allocated any funds for marketing Lowell High? The editorial staff at the newspaper, various talk radio folks, and perhaps even the city council could seriously injure themselves in the scramble to be the first to condemn such “wasteful” spending. Far from being wasteful, such spending would be a prudent investment in our schools and in our city that could significantly improve academic performance, particularly on standardized tests such as MCAS. Logic says that a student who meets the entrance requirements of most private high schools, let’s say, would probably pass the MCAS test. Add a few dozen of those students to the population of any urban high school in Massachusetts and that school will show improvement statistically on its MCAS performance. Such improvement would make the school even more attractive thereby attracting additional high achieving students, further improving the school’s reputation and self-image. What would be wrong with that?