For my analogous immersion experience, I decided to replicate the process that a parent might take when seeking information about high schools. For my experience, I chose the internet as the primary source of information, although brochures, parents nights, and recommendations often supplement this process. I mostly treated this process as an information search, and tried to better understand the ways in which a parent might look for information about a school
- Search: South Bend Schools
2. Narrow search to: South Bend High Schools
3. Compare the rankings of each public high school in South Bend. The thing that sticks out are the low rankings across the board for the four schools (none above 5). If I saw that as a parent, that might lead me to seek more information about public schools in neighboring areas, or private school options.
4. If someone recommended Clay high school to me, or if I wanted more information about that specific school, I would go next to the reviews. The reviews for Clay are fairly positive, and seem to paint it in a good light. As a parent, it would be encouraging to read real reviews from parents and students.
5. At this point, I might extend the search to nearby cities, like Mishawaka, to see what other options exist. Principal Eid mentioned that they lose a lot of kids to Penn High School. This makes sense, considering their ranking here is a 9, which is almost double that of the public high schools in South Bend.
6. If education is my number one priority, I might consider looking at only Blue Ribbon schools, to see if there were any in my area.
7. Once I narrowed down a school that I wanted to learn more about, I would go to their website. 2 things stand out when searching for Clay. For one, the school’s official website is only the 5th thing to come up on google. Secondly, the news article regarding a recent fight is right below it, which could be problematic if a parent sees this in their preliminary search.
8. The website looks slightly outdated. Maybe have more than two pictures on the front page, and cycle through them a little quicker? I don’t think the website is bad, but it could use some modernizing.
9. I would also be interested in seeing some statistics about Clay. Perhaps numbers on diversity, or graduation rates, or college admits. This might be a good section to add to the website, or the “About Us” section.
10. Lastly, it would be important for me to know that the staff was strong. Because of that, I would likely do a search to find information about teachers or principals. One example website I might use would be RateMyTeachers.com
It’s very difficult to track the complete cycle of a parent choosing a high school for their child, since it’s such a lengthy and unique process. They might start to be influenced before their child is even board, and they will likely be flooded with information from a number of different sources. The analogous immersion experience I undertook highlighted some ways that Clay can better leverage their online presence to show parents all they have to offer. Their website is strong, but could definitely do more to highlight the elements that Principal Eid is really passionate about.