Edison Awarded 2 More Philadelphia Schools

"We have invested in improving the quality of leadership, doing more training with principals and teachers, brought in a focused core curriculum and invested in core values like respect, integrity and responsibility," Barth said. "We have dramatically improved student achievement in the worst schools in the district. Is 21 percent grade-level proficient ultimately acceptable? No, it is not. But it is on the road to where we want to be."

But privatization critics are skeptical. The teachers union contends the improvement is small and comes at the expense of other schools in the district.

"Edison is getting, what, about $200 per student extra, which means the money has to be coming out of somewhere else," said Hal Moss, chief information officer for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. "And who is saying that money is going into the schools anyway? They have to make a profit.

"But the important thing is that the district has a budget and other schools will presumably have less money," Moss said. "So then, at a better school, the principal will now have to say, 'Do I cut the music teacher or the computer teacher?' And everyone will suffer for this small improvement Edison might make in other schools."

Even that improvement might be illusory, said Eva Gold, a founder of Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit group that has been studying school reform for a dozen years. She said the improvement in state test scores is only one notion of what educational success might be.

"When you teach to that test, you can, initially, improve the scores for those at the margin. So they are claiming success when it is far too early to tell," Gold said. "More importantly, this was said to be an effort at competition, to see whether private or nonprofit companies could do better. But it seems more collaborative, with the School Reform Commission working more closely with Edison and the others. It just seems too quick -- less than three years -- to call this a model."

Nevels defends the School Reform Commission's award of additional schools to Edison as prudent. After all, he said, the Philadelphia schools were in dire circumstances. Test scores were only part of the problem. The panoply of urban school district troubles -- discipline problems, high dropout rates, deficient facilities, lack of a coordinated curriculum -- were all too prevalent in Philadelphia, he said.

"Certainly funding is and was a problem, but if we show we are improving, and Edison has started that, there will be continued funding from the state," he said. "The only way we are going to improve schools here is if the state and the city cooperate. If that means more private and public cooperating in running the most difficult schools, then that is what we may have to do."

But Paul Socolar, who edits the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an independent nonprofit newspaper that covers the district, is not convinced.

"The concern was raised three years ago, and is relevant today, that Edison and the like is all a diversion, a way of avoiding the fundamental issues, which are chronic underfunding, the movement of the best students out of the system, crumbling schools, not enough texts, training of teachers, not enough staff, a whole range of things," Socolar said. "There has been an improvement in test scores in those schools, and that is to be lauded, but in some cases, these schools had positive trends.

"There is no doubt other urban districts are looking at what is going on in Philadelphia," he said. "We just hope they are looking closely and not just taking a few test scores as the big answer."