Show Notes: 

For more advice on crafting your key messages in language that appeals to parents, check out Decoding Your School Communication from the Winter 2025 edition of SchoolCEO Magazine.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to the SchoolCEO Podcast. I’m your host, Eileen Beard. Let’s carry on with strategic communication planning. Now that you have assessed the situation and segmented your audience, it’s time to work on your key messages. But they're not marketing slogans or catchy taglines. Think of them as the essential points you want every audience to understand and remember about your schools. When done right, they become the foundation for everything you communicate, from your website copy to your crisis responses.

Although you’re probably not starting from scratch, your key messages aren't set in stone. They should evolve as your district grows and changes. That’s why you should revisit them as you work on a longterm communication strategy.

So how do you develop messages that actually work?

Step One: Start with your students' stories. SchoolCEO says it over and over again in print and on this podcast for a reason: many districts are still getting the hang of this crucial step. Your most powerful messages come from real examples of student learning and growth, not from abstract mission statements. So before you craft your messages, look for the examples that will back those statements up. If your message is “Preparing the citizens of tomorrow” do you have examples of students participating in student government or volunteering in the community or other snapshots of civic engagement? 

Step Two: Address your elephants. Maybe it's outdated facilities, budget concerns, or test scores you wish were higher. Effective key messages don't ignore challenges—they demonstrate your commitment to improving them. For example: "We're investing in our facilities because our students deserve learning environments that match their potential.” 

Step Three: Keep it conversational. Write your messages the way you'd explain your schools to a neighbor over coffee. Avoid education jargon and bureaucratic language. If you wouldn't say "We provide rigorous, standards-based instruction" in casual conversation, don't put it in your key messages. SchoolCEO Editor Melissa Hite wrote about avoiding jargon for the Winter 2025 issue of the magazine. Here’s what she found.

Edu-speak can cause families to disengage. Research on the topic appears in the 2020 Journal of Language and Social Psychology. The TL;DR is this: when people encounter specialized terminology, they don’t just get confused. When people hear stuff that they don’t understand, rather than ask for clarification, they often assume they can’t get the hang of it or it doesn’t apply to them and they move on. 

Unfortunately, the negative effects of jargon go beyond disengagement or disinterest. In some circumstances, eduspeak can actually spur opposition. 

In 2021, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute released a study on what K-12 parents think about social-emotional learning, or SEL. The findings? Parents generally support SEL—they just don’t like the term “social-emotional learning” itself. It’s no wonder. For some parents, social-emotional learning has become a flashpoint akin to “critical race theory.” However, in the study parents showed overwhelming support for these central tenets of SEL: “setting goals and working toward achieving them” and “empathizing with the feelings of others.” It’s all in the wording.

Perhaps the most damaging effect of eduspek is that it can make families feel inadequate or unwelcome in your schools. A 2023 study by researchers at Columbia Business School found that we often use jargon as a way to prove to our peers that we’re smart and capable. But when uninitiated audiences encounter technical jargon, an equal and opposite effect occurs; the speaker feels smarter, but the listener feels dumber. And we know the last thing you want families to feel is unwelcome. 

Which leads me to Step 4 toward creating powerful key messages: testing them. Set up focus groups with parents, community members, and even students. You have to run your language by someone less fluent in eduspeak. Then ask them: What do you hear? What questions does this raise? What would you want to know more about?

Pay attention to their language. The words your community uses to describe your schools should influence how you craft your messages.

For more tips on how to make your schools more inclusive by ditching eduspeak, read the full article: Decode Your School Communication linked in the show notes.

Thanks for joining me.