{"id":280,"date":"2011-07-28T13:14:12","date_gmt":"2011-07-28T17:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=280"},"modified":"2011-07-28T13:14:13","modified_gmt":"2011-07-28T17:14:13","slug":"the-viral-marketing-of-private-school-scholarships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2011\/07\/28\/the-viral-marketing-of-private-school-scholarships\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Viral’ Marketing of Private School Scholarships"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Step Up For Students web site<\/p>

Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill<\/p><\/div>\n

Two years ago the non-profit group that oversees Florida’s tax credit scholarship<\/a> program for low-income students cut off applications in December.<\/p>\n

Last year the cut off came in October.<\/p>\n

This year Step Up for Students ran out of space on May 22<\/a> — after just seven weeks of enrollment. Last year the program provided 34,600 scholarship — up 5,700 students from the year before.<\/p>\n

Why? A viral marketing campaign among parents, said Step Up for Students President Doug Tuthill.<\/p>\n

“Parents are very aggressive about seeking out information,” Tuthill said, noting his group does little scholarship marketing. “They have their own social network.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Scholarship parents — who average just under $26,000 a year in household income — are talking about the program at Medicaid-accepting physicians offices, at church and in welfare offices, Tuthill said.<\/p>\n

The scholarship program grants businesses a tax credit if they fund private school scholarships. Last year Step Up For Students raised $140 million, which allowed the group to raise up to $175 million this year. Tuthill expects to meet that goal, which would raise the tax credit limit to $218.7 million next year.<\/p>\n

Tuthill said parents surveyed say the most important factor in choosing a school is safety, both physical safety of their children but also insulating them from bad community influences and the too-common intersection of schools, police and courts. Parents want a psychological space where their child feels comfortable, he said.<\/p>\n

“They understand education is essential…it’s a very basic human instinct,” he said. The larger school choice and accountability debate is “so disconnected from the reality on the ground.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years ago the non-profit group that oversees Florida’s tax credit scholarship program for low-income students cut off applications in December. Last year the cut off came in October. This year Step Up for Students ran out of space on May 22 — after just seven weeks of enrollment. Last year the program provided 34,600 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[1010,1008],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}