Education Alternatives, Inc. (EAI), the private, for-profit outfit that has been managing some schools in Baltimore, is going around the country looking for new business. It's making the same promises in Hartford, New Haven and Hawaii that impressed the folks in Baltimore two years ago. Of course, it's too early to tell whether EAI will succeed in turning around the Baltimore schools it manages, but what about a tentative grade on what the company has accomplished so far? EAI talks a very good game. Do the facts support their claims?
EAI came to Baltimore embracing Baltimore's goal that students would start doing better-- right away: "Beginning immediately, each year should reveal an improvement in the quality of instruction, resulting in a measurable increase in student achievement." EAI also said these changes wouldn't cost Baltimore a penny more per pupil: The company would take only the average per-pupil allowance given to other schools. And it would economize on noninstructional services, which would allow it to channel extra dollars into EAI classrooms at the same time as it made a profit for its stockholders. This sounded very impressive. However, the reality is something quite different.
As an AFT research report based primarily on the Baltimore school district's own data shows, students in EAI elementary schools didn't begin to do better "immediately." Instead, their test scores went down. Whereas youngsters in non-EAI schools registered modest gains in reading and math during 1992-93 and kids in schools selected by the Baltimore school district as a control group went up 5 percentiles in reading and math, scores in EAI elementary schools declined considerably-- 4 percentiles in reading and 8 percentiles in math. And these were schools where scores had risen the year before EAI arrived.
It's rare for scores to go up in the early days of an experiment, but it's also rare for them to plummet. The Baltimore school district replies that these are old scores, but they are the most recent and only ones it has released. If the district has better evidence, why not produce it?
EAI's financial claims don't look any more credible than its academic claims. Contrary to its promises, the company didn't work within the average per-pupil expenditure -- $5,582 in 1991-92. Instead, EAI schools received as much as $500 more per pupil. And the company also stands to get a $2-million-dollar windfall this year and in subsequent years because the city has agreed to give EAI a special deal on central support services purchased from the school district.
As for economizing on noninstructional services so that more money could be "redirect[ed] back into the classrooms to fund education for the children of Baltimore," EAI has done the opposite. A 1992-93 audit shows that it made substantial cuts in the money spent in the classroom. The Baltimore school budget allocated 65 percent to salaries and benefits for teachers and paraprofessionals and other instructional personnel. But EAI cut the teaching staff at its schools by one-quarter and replaced paraprofessionals with $7-an-hour "interns" who get no benefits. It spent only 48 percent of its allocation on instructional services and ploughed the savings back into noninstructional expenses like lawyers, accountants, project administration, corporate travel and improvement of the physical plant.
Have these economies in classroom spending improved education for the kids? Hardly, as the drop in test scores shows. Also, classes are much more crowded than they were before EAI came in. And since half the positions that were cut were special education teachers, a lot of children with disabilities have been dumped into regular classrooms with teachers and interns who have no training or support to help these kids.
The interns? They've mostly been a disaster. EAI had a tough time finding college graduates who would work for $7 an hour, with no benefits-- never mind ones who were qualified-- and the turnover was high among people who did take the jobs. As a result, some classes had no intern or a succession of interns. And youngsters who needed the continuity that had been provided by the paraprofessionals, by and large women from the community, got another dose of instability.
Perhaps it is premature to pronounce the EAI experiment in Baltimore a success or a failure. The company has come through on its promises to clean up the physical plant. On the other hand, though EAI said it would raise attendance-- and claims that it has, "dramatically"-- attendance in EAI schools remains flat. And when it comes to financial matters or student achievement, EAI seems to feel no embarrassment about promising one thing and doing another-- or claiming great results where none exist. The best advice for other school districts that are looking into EAI's services is caveat emptor.