National Education Goals Panel

Our Client's Challenge:

For the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP), a bipartisan panel of state and national elected officials dedicated to high standards in education, Hager Sharp's challenge was to help reinvigorate the debate and build support for standards-based education reform.

The Difference:

We conducted media training for the Panel's spokespersons, hosted one-on-one discussion forums and editorial meetings, distributed regular news releases and helped reporters build education feature stories grounded in the Panel's findings. For one of the Panel's studies on the education achievement gap between white and minority students, Hager Sharp generated more than 275 million media impressions. The Panel's work has been featured in stories on ABC's World News Tonight, CNN Headline News, CBS' 60 Minutes, National Public Radio, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal. The Panel's Acting Executive Director appeared on PBS's NewsHour program to discuss the Panel's work.

Another recent study, focused on Department of Defense Schools, generated 12.5 million print media impressions, including the front page of USA Today's LIFE section, The Associated Press, all regional editions of the Wall Street Journal, and military publications such as Army Times and Navy Times.

Another layer of our strategy involved specials events, activities and programs. These included a series of field hearings where governors, members of congress and state legislators on the Panel visited schools and school leaders throughout the nation and held discussion forums on effective policies and practices. Hager Sharp developed all media materials (press releases, press kits, bios), and was on hand to provide support on the day of each event. Hager Sharp also produced two national teleconferences that were down-linked via satellite by more than 1,000 different sites in every state and territory in the U.S. as well as live on the Internet. The hearings and broadcasts literally brought the Panel to schools and communities throughout the nation.