What questions should school districts be asking if they want to improve their schools instead of being taken for a ride?
When a school district contracts with a for-profit company to build a new gymnasium, it's relatively easy to make sure the district gets what it pays for. But when it considers hiring a for-profit company to manage schools and improve student achievement, as a number are now doing, it's a different story. Assessing the quality of this kind of service is very tough, especially since there is little experience to go on -- Baltimore is the only district that has purchased this kind of service. What kinds of questions should school districts be asking if they want to improve their schools instead of being taken for a ride? Based on Baltimore's experience with Education Alternatives, Inc. (EAI), here are some issues that need to be raised.
Shouldn't some or all of a company's profits be dependent on making specified improvements in student achievement? EAI came to Baltimore promising that student achievement would shoot up -- exactly what is needed in a school district where so many kids are doing so poorly. That hasn't happened. So far, according to the school district's own data, test scores have fallen in EAI schools even though they have gone up in other Baltimore schools. However, the district was not smart enough to insist on having the promise to improve student achievement written into the contract. So EAI could stay in Baltimore for five or six more years, make millions of dollars in profits and leave its schools performing more poorly than when in arrived. No matter how little the company accomplishes, it will still make money -- and Baltimore and its kids will have to be satisfied with whatever they get.
Shouldn 't there be a limit to the money the company can take out of the system? In Baltimore, EAI said it would make its profit by cutting bureaucratic waste. However, the contract set no limit to the company's profits, so EAI is free to extract as much as it can from the system. EAI has already made substantial cuts in classroom expenditures -- without cutting the central bureaucracy. It has raised class size; it has gotten rid of special education classes and dumped children with disabilities into regular classrooms without the support services they need; and it has fired paraprofessionals and brought in $7-an-hour interns who get no benefits. If the school board had negotiated a contract that committed EAI to raising student performance, the company would have had a strong incentive to improve the quality of instruction instead of making cuts that can only damage it. Or, if the school board had negotiated a ceiling on the company's profits, that, too, would have removed the incentive to squeeze as much as possible out of the system. As it is, EAI's contract with Baltimore is a license to rape the school system.
Shouldn't there be some formal mechanism for establishing that the company is living up to its promises? In theory, the school board and the superintendent are the watchdogs for the public. Like the homeowner who follows the contractor around to make sure that the lighting fixtures are the ones agreed to, they are supposed to make sure that the company lives up to its end of the bargain. But what happens if the school board and the superintendent don't do this? What if they say to themselves, "I've brought this company in, and if it bombs, what will happen to my credibility?" That's the situation in Baltimore, and it's so bad that if you heard the superintendent at a public meeting, you'd swear he was a salesman for EAI instead of the person who is supposed to be watching the store.
There is a better way for a school district to make sure that a school management firm lives up to its promises: Write provisions into the contract for a formal assessment by an independent third party with real expertise in schools.
When school districts hire for-profit firms to supply them with most kinds of goods and services, they pay careful attention to the company's track record. But none of the for-profit school management outfits currently operating has any track record. EAI, the oldest, has managed nine public schools for just three years in Baltimore; the Edison Project, which is looking for business right now, has never managed any. When they talk about what they can do for a school system, that's exactly what it is -- talk. They have nothing to back it up.
Maybe, over time, these companies and others that enter the field will develop expertise through trial and error. Right now, they will be learning on the job. Of course, school management firms have a right to do this, but school districts have a responsibility to protect themselves, their students and the public. I don't see a lot of evidence that they're doing it.