The headlines blare: "Pa.'s major school privatization try fails." But read just one or two paragraphs in to discover the roots of the problem:
Edison Schools, a for-profit company hired four years ago to run eight of the city's nine schools, is pulling out in June, partly because it has not gotten paid about $4 million in fees.The decision followed a tumultuous year that began poorly - with book shortages, teacher shortages, and a riot at the high school that led to 28 arrests - and got steadily worse, with Edison at the mercy of local officials when it came to control over the district's finances and getting the information it needed to do its job.
Among other things, it turned out that the district's poor accounting concealed a $35 million budget deficit. District officials said recently that without an immediate loan to pay teachers, the system would have just $9 left in the bank.
"We have not been able to work well together," Edison spokesman Adam Tucker said. "We knew that we were no longer going to be enough of an active agent for positive change."
Could any system work well when students riot, bad teachers can't be dismissed, and local officials mismanage all the cash?
Edison also found itself in a perpetual three-way power struggle with the board and the central administration. The contract did not allow Edison to hire or fire teachers. The company also did not control the district's finances and had limited ability to shift resources to places that needed them. It was not involved in generating the faulty information that hid the system's budget deficit.Posted by kswygert at May 31, 2005 03:18 PMEdison's Tucker said the company struggled just to get accurate information from the district on student enrollment.
Edison's experiences in Chester are a sharp contrast to its tenure in Philadelphia. There, the company began work amid regular protests by hundreds of parents and students opposed to privatization. But after a few years, its reviews have been largely positive. Test scores at several schools have risen. Complaints about its ability to operate in a big city have dwindled.