Word: wichitas
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Vaughn nonetheless gave the project a green light. The man he entrusted with Wichita's first Edison school was Larrie Reynolds, a veteran principal and music teacher who harbored deep frustrations over the limitations of public education. That attitude is shared by many of the teachers Reynolds recruited for what is now called the Dodge-Edison School. Most are what Reynolds refers to as "flagship educators"--the best of the old system and some of the brightest prospects emerging from graduate school. He lured them with a unique scheme: teachers in small clusters would be given 90 minutes...
Larry Vaughn, superintendent of schools in Wichita, thought otherwise. When a group of business people from New York City came to town in 1994 looking for a site for a privately managed, for-profit public school, Vaughn invited them to consider setting up shop in Orchard Hills. "We figured if their design worked there," Vaughn explains, "it would give us the leverage to go to almost any other school in our district and be successful...
...betting on Edison, Vaughn thrust Wichita into the front ranks of a bold and still controversial experiment in privatizing public education. America's first four Edison schools opened in the fall of 1995 in Wichita; Boston; Mount Clemens, Mich.; and Sherman, Texas. Three years and nearly two dozen new schools later, the debate continues. Despite warnings that privatizing public education is a recipe in which profit takes precedence over learning, the Edison Project is beginning to attract more serious consideration. Most of Edison's schools (25 altogether) are still too new to show definitive results, but initial reports from pioneers...
...scores jumped more than 15% during its first year; in nearly every area, scores for its students not only caught up to but also surpassed the average in the district. While such results would be welcome anywhere, they are especially important here because if the school doesn't produce, Wichita can pull the plug. "We were on pins and needles," says Leslie Foster, who teaches a third-and-fourth-grade classroom, "but when the results came out, we were ecstatic...
Nevertheless, the school is young and the picture incomplete. Critics argue that the funds lavished on early "showcases" like Dodge-Edison will dry up as Edison investors begin demanding a return on their money. But in Wichita parents and teachers still marvel at what they see happening to their kids. When Beth Loos' son David started third grade at Dodge-Edison, he was unable to read, period. A year later, in fourth grade, he is reading at third-grade level. "Before I arrived here, I heard many negative things about the school," says Loos, who teaches Spanish. "Now I feel...