(C) Common Dreams
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Private Groups Get 42 Schools In Philadelphia [1]

['Jacques Steinberg']

Date: 2002-04-18

The panel's vote today represents a milestone in the decade-long growth of the movement to turn troubled public schools over to private operators. There is no better index of the impact of this effort than Edison's own expansion: over the last six years, it has gone from operating a handful of public schools to more than 130 in 22 states, with a combined student population that is larger than all but a few dozen urban districts.

All told, the Philadelphia panel voted to assign an outside manager to one of every six schools in the city. In addition to Edison, the other organizations involved include two colleges that are in Philadelphia: Temple University, which was assigned five schools, and the University of Pennsylvania, which received three schools.

The panel also tapped four other companies with various degrees of school administrative experience, though each was smaller than Edison. They are Chancellor Beacon Academies Inc., a for-profit company based in Florida that operates public and private schools (assigned five schools); Foundations Inc., a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia that offers after-school programs (four schools); Victory Schools Inc., a New York-based company that opened the state's first charter school (three schools); and Universal Companies, a new venture begun by the record producer Kenny Gamble (two schools).

How much responsibility those managers would be given in the schools that they have been assigned remains to be negotiated with the state panel, as well as with the teachers' union and the parents in those schools. But panel officials said that, in many instances, the outsiders would likely make sweeping changes in school curriculum, as well as seek to replace school administrators and many of the teachers.

After the meeting, Jerry Jordan, a vice president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said he regretted that the panel had said so little about how the schools would be redesigned by the outsiders.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/18/us/private-groups-get-42-schools-in-philadelphia.html

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