The FAPE Site

Philadelphia's Privately-Managed Schools Pricey,
But Produce Same Test Scores as Other Schools

Privately-managed public schools in Philadelphia are not performing any better than all other Philadelphia schools. They just cost the taxpayers an extra $90 million or so.

The Rand Corporation and Research for Action conducted a study released in late January that compared student achievement gains as measured by standardized math and reading tests in schools subject to various reform experiments to all other Philadelphia schools. The study found that test scores have improved overall in Philadelphia since a state takeover of the system in 2002, but there is no difference in the results at privately-managed and other schools.

Jolley Bruce Christman of Research for Action, told the Philadelphia Daily News, "There's no evidence to proceed with the model of private management of schools, as is, that we have here in Philadelphia."

The study's authors concluded that "Philadelphia provides no evidence to support private management as an especially effective method of promoting student achievement…"

The Philadelphia findings have implications for other parts of the country that are considering private management of public schools, which is one of the alternatives available to school districts that must reconstitute habitually "failing" schools - or at least defined as "failing" by the No Child Left Behind Act's imperfect Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirement.

While the study found there was no statistically significant difference in the performance of the different types of private management - for-profit, university or other non-profit - it did identify "substantially negative" results for Temple University and Victory schools in math.

The study also noted:

"In sum, Philadelphia has seen substantial districtwide gains in the proportion of students achieving proficiency since the 2002 state takeover. But after four years, the gains of its low-achieving schools (constituting most of the schools in the district) have generally not exceeded the gains of low-achieving schools elsewhere in Pennsylvania."

The only slightly bright note for Philadelphia in the study are reported gains in 21 "restructured" schools that received additional math and reading time, teacher coaches, and other special attention while remaining under district management. Students in these schools had notably higher math scores in the first three years of the program and in reading in the first year. The program was disbanded in the fourth year.

Philadelphia's reform experiment in private management turned over 45 schools to for-profit, university and other non-profit companies. Of the for-profit vendors, New York-based Edison Schools, Inc. runs 20 schools. The remaining schools were divided up among the for-profit Chancellor Beacon Academies and Victory companies, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, and the non-profit Foundations, Inc. and Universal Companies. The district has since fired Chancellor Beacon Academies.

Despite a history of financial ups and downs, Edison remains the nation's largest private company in the business of managing public schools. The Philadelphia contract is Edison's largest and the largest single private management experiment in the country.

In addition to the privately managed and restructured schools, at the outset of its reform effort in 2002, the Philadelphia school system provided another 16 schools with additional resources, but without any other kind of special intervention. These became known as the "Sweet 16" schools.

The Rand/Research for Action study concluded:

• Sweet 16 schools: There were no statistically significant effects, positive or negative, in reading or math, in any of the four years in which they received additional resources.
• Privately managed schools (as a group): There were no statistically significant effects, positive or negative, in reading or math, in any of the four years after takeover.
• Restructured schools: There were significantly positive effects in math in all three years of implementation and in reading in the first year. In the fourth year, after the Office of Restructured Schools had been disbanded and the additional resources for the schools had ceased, the former restructured schools maintained a substantial (though only marginally statistically significant) effect in math.

For more detailed information on the origin of Philadelphia's current reform effort, read this transcript of a talk initially presented by Eva Travers of Research for Action at The Friends Association of Higher Education and Friends Council on Education Conference at Swarthmore College and Pendle Hill, June 28, 2003.