CHARACTERIZING PUBLIC CLASSICAL SCHOOLS: PROMOTIONAL LANGUAGE IN MISSION AND VISION STATEMENTS

Abstract

Little is known about primary and secondary public classical schooling in the United States despite a history of over 30 years and the increasing influence of classical organizations on individual states’ curriculum. The lack of information is ascribed to the lack of salient literature on the implementation of the classical approach in public school contexts. To begin to characterize classical public schooling, the researcher conducts a comparative content analysis of mission and vision statements from 47 classical and 50 non-classical public schools. Pointwise mutual information (PMI), an association metric, is used to meaningfully differentiate the promotional language employed by the classical and non-classical school groups to appeal to prospective families in a competitive public education market. Results indicate that classical public schools advertise curricular emphases on challenging academics and character formation, demonstrating an intriguing connection to the available literature on classical education despite the focus of that literature on private and religious contexts for learning.