Reaching Out to Students When They Talk and Text

This article profiles a New York (NY) City (New York, United States) city government administration effort to use mobile telephones to motivate low-achieving students to succeed in school. The effort will use text messages, drawn up by an advertising agency and sent over the phones, that promote achievement.


According to the NY City schools chancellor, it is a first attempt to bring about change in the culture and behaviour of low-performing students, after years of efforts focusing on school structure and teaching. "The pilot program will include mentoring and incentives for high performance, like free concerts and sporting events and free minutes and ring tones for their phones. Every student in each of the schools will be given a cellphone."


The effort is the result of information from marketing research firms, which found that black and Latino students from some of the city’s most hard-pressed neighbourhoods had a difficult time understanding that doing well in school can provide tangible long-term benefits. The focus group research showed that cellphones were the primary means of communication for many teenagers, and that reaching them through a concerted campaign of text messages or through the internet was more likely to be effective than a traditional billboard and television campaign. Officials, as reported here, are working with students to listen to their opinions on the marketing messages.


Five advertising agencies were asked to develop plans to “rebrand” academic achievement. The text message campaign is being pilot tested among 10,000 - 15,000 students at 24 city schools. The city plans to enlist adult mentors who will call students periodically to encourage them to study or to congratulate them for doing well on a test. In addition, celebrity participation in text messaging and calling is being sought. Teachers are being encouraged to provide extra information for homework assignments by mobile phone, and officials plan for mobile access to include high-speed Internet access.