"The advertiser gets a group of kids who cannot go to the bathroom, who cannot change the station, who cannot listen to their mother yell in the background, who cannot be playing Nintendo, who cannot have their headsets on." –Joel Babbit, former company president of Channel One.

Marketers know that the best way to build brand loyalty is to hook potential customers when they're young. And if you're going to sell to kids, what better place to market your wares than schools, where you have a captive audience of millions five days a week?

Thanks to tight school budgets, marketers willing to supply free educational materials and equipment often find school officials and boards of education greeting them with open arms. What do schools get out of these deals? Less than you might think.

Nearly 80 percent of corporate-sponsored academic materials contained biased or incomplete information and promoted the consumption of the sponsor's product or service, according to a report by Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. Such materials include a Chips Ahoy counting game in which children count the number of chocolate chips in their cookies and an art project from Kellogg in which kids create sculpture from Rice Krispies.

The money that marketers pay to schools fails to make up for budget shortfalls, which means that schools still lack funding for appropriate materials. New York City, for example, will receive $5.9 million a year for allowing companies to place ads on the district's school buses– less than one-tenth of one percent of the school system's $8 billion annual budget. Schools around the country have given Coke and Pepsi exclusive rights to sell and advertise their beverages on campus for as little as $3 per student. Who's making out better on this deal?

Children watch commercials and provide marketers with information at taxpayer expense. Eight million middle and high school students watch ten minutes of programming and two minutes of commercials daily on Channel One–and while the company donates the equipment, the programming is by no means free. Massachusetts students spent two days tasting cereal and completing an opinion poll. And students who use computers and Internet connections donated by the ZapMe! Corporation are having information about their Web browsing habits divided up by gender, age and Zip code and sold to marketers.

These ads barely begin to cover what students see at school each day. A math textbook from McGraw-Hill was found to be loaded with brand name references to Barbie dolls, Cocoa Frosted Flakes, and dozens of other companies. Schools distribute free textbook covers emblazoned with corporate logos. Corporate-sponsored contests offer dubious "prizes"–in one school, students who collected the most General Mills cereal box-tops were rewarded with (drum roll, please) a visit by the Trix rabbit, who encouraged them to eat more cereal. Can you imagine what the losers got?

Commercialism in Education Research Unit (CERU) provides information about the nature and impact of commercial activities in schools for the purpose of promoting thoughtful education practice and sound public policy.

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