Word: edisons
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Wendy Walsh's seventh-graders at Gillespie Middle School in North Philadelphia have something in common with investors in the for-profit education company Edison Schools. Both fear that Edison, the nation's largest private operator of public schools, may be failing them. "The children ask me what's going on," Walsh says, "and I don't know what to tell them. We're all facing the great unknown...
...most ambitious project to date, Edison is scheduled to take over Gillespie and 19 other schools in Philadelphia this fall. But just as the company's initial meetings with teachers began there last week, Edison was absorbing blows from a defection by a pillar client in Boston, a scolding by the Securities and Exchange Commission, lawsuits from angry investors and persistent doubts from teachers, parents and students in Philadelphia...
...Boston Renaissance Charter School became one of Edison's first clients when the school was founded in 1995. But a desire to move in a different curricular direction and disappointment with scores on Massachusetts state exams are prompting school officials to vacate their five-year contract with Edison this summer, three years before it was set to expire in 2005. "There was a sense that we're ready to do this on our own," says Dudley Blodget, Renaissance's president. "Test scores were one factor, but we really felt we didn't need the whole school-management piece any longer...
...benefits claimed by Edison and other private managers in terms of academic achievement and efficiency are uncertain at best. What is certain is that by transferring decision-making power into private hands, parents will lose influence over their children’s education. Philadelphia schools are in a terrible state, but privatization is the wrong way to deliver the kind quality education its students deserve...
...Staff levels many accurate criticisms against Edison Schools, Inc. However, contracting Edison to run the district does not surrender democratic control; rather it puts control of the schools in the hands of those who care more for the children than their own jobs. Indeed, hiring Edison to run the schools will be even more democratic—and effective—than the present system. The terms of the contract will be decided in a debate, a one-time deliberative format likely to produce a decision with which a majority of parents participate and agree. Gone will be the inefficiency...