Charter School Media: A Correlated Topic Model

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Marketing and Branding in Public Education

Abstract

Given the steady flow of charter school policy in the United States despite relatively mixed evidence on charter school effects throughout history, it seems that some investigation of the ideologies attached to charter school policy is warranted. To understand the ideologies connected to charter schools, I conduct a probabilistic topic modeling study, using correlated topic models, of over 300,000 newspaper articles published in the United States that mention charter schools from 1990 through 2016. First, in earlier years, there was significant emphasis on the publicness of charter schools and their independence from the public system. Later, there was more of an emphasis on the financial resources aspect of charter school policy.

Author

• Richard Blissett, Seton Hall University