As school choice continues to grow, public schools vie for students with innovative marketing approaches.
The TikTok logo seen displayed on a smartphone.(Mateusz Slodkowski / Getty Images)
A teenage girl in a green crop top and sweatpants stands in front of her iPhone camera. Pulsing music plays over time lapses of the student and her friends in class—filling out worksheets, doing TikTok dances, working on iPads. It may seem to be a typical day-in-the-life video posted by a would-be teenage influencer, but this video is different. This student isn’t posting on her own or chasing personal fame. Instead, she is promoting her school as part of public education’s newest recruitment strategy.
In late March, Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) unveiled an initiative to recruit and pay high school students to post positive accounts of their time at DPSCD institutions. To get this job, eligible teens had to create a 60-second reel explaining why they would be a great fit for the role. Then applicants attended social-media etiquette and content-creation classes. Those selected receive $250 a month to serve as student influencers. Some of the resulting videos are more polished, featuring interviews with teachers, while others are pure teenage energy, full of teenage slang and YouTube-like intros.
