The glare of publicity proved unflattering to Edison Schools.
Back in 2001, the San Francisco Unified School District was a big national and even international news story because of one little school -- Edison Charter Academy at 22nd and Dolores.
ECA was run by New York-based Edison Schools Inc., a flamboyant experiment in running public schools for profit. Edison, founded by flashy entrepreneur Chris Whittle, was publicly traded on the NASDAQ for several years. At the time, it was widely hailed as the future of public education, the miracle everyone had been seeking.
Edison was the darling of the free-market right, touted by the big think tanks (one of its top executives, John Chubb, was and still is a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution), the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the rest of that crowd. Some liberals chimed in too. I would imagine that Peter Schrag and Joan Walsh – both prominent journalists whose attitudes appear to be generally liberal, pro-public-education and (in my view) overall highly sensible – are a bit embarrassed now about their 2001 articles praising Edison achievement in The Nation and Salon, respectively.
With all the publicity Edison got at the time, it’s surprising that more people aren’t wondering what ever happened to that miracle that was supposed to be bringing private-sector efficiencies to public education. I really expected some high-profile collapse, and semi-joked that Whittle would fake his own death. But actually, Edison has just gradually faded, and has quietly shifted its focus toward providing supplemental services to schools, an area in which a for-profit business is perfectly unremarkable.
Now it has even more quietly officially died, though apparently its successor will continue managing however many schools are still left in Edison’s hands (again, Edison’s own information is fuzzy). That presumably includes the one in San Francisco, which for years now has been under the auspices of the California state Board of Education, no longer an SFUSD school. It’s a rent-paying tenant in an SFUSD property; little is known about it outside its own community.
Whittle has left the building (and though his vision may have died, he himself has made no apparent effort to disguise the fact that he’s still alive). Edison, under its current leadership, now has officially changed its name to edisonlearning and its focus to becoming “a player in education software, focusing on student tracking systems and other ‘achievement management solutions.’,” according to a blog post by Thomas Toch, a think-tanker who has long studied Edison.
Meanwhile, Whittle and his Edison colleague Benno Schmidt (a once-respected academic – in fact, former president of Yale) have moved on to a new scheme, according to New York Magazine: “an international chain of for-profit elite private schools.” Somehow the New York Mag headline seems like the final nail in Edison’s coffin: “After failing with for-profit public schools, Chris Whittle goes private.”
It’s hard now to explain why Edison’s lone San Francisco school made such a media splash. At the time – early 2001 – Edison was trying to take over several schools in New York City and the entire Philadelphia school district (both efforts were unsuccessful, though it got a few Philly schools to manage), just as the SFUSD Board of Education was attempting to sever its contract with Edison. In an odd strategy, Edison responded by launching a massive PR blitz about the SFUSD controversy (despite the fact that other Edison client school districts were also moving to kick Edison out, and one – Sherman, Texas, Edison’s first client – had already done so).
For reasons that are even more unclear, the national and even international media obliged Edison by picking up the story – largely without question just as they got it from Edison. Edison’s message, playing on San Francisco’s easy-to-exploit “land of fruits and nuts” image, was that the Board of Education was trying to get rid of a successful school because of purely ideological opposition to a for-profit company running schools. While that wasn’t completely invalid – a new school board majority was indeed unfavorably inclined toward the concept – it was also the case that Edison was failing to abide by aspects of its contract with the district, and its school was costing SFUSD more than expected and showing mediocre achievement.
Other Edison clients around the nation had the same complaints, which is why so many other districts were also moving to get rid of Edison – a fact that somehow escaped many of the reporters who descended on San Francisco as well as much of the local press. Our district and its battle with Edison inexplicably made Page 1 of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and other major media hither and yon. Much of the local media was also in Edison’s camp; SFUSD took a bad ongoing beating on the Chronicle editorial pages. One time I explained the whole situation to a friend who was a part-time Chronicle copy editor, and she was shocked to find out that ECA wasn’t SFUSD’s top-scoring school – so that gives an idea of the impression the Chron was conveying. (At the time, ECA bumped around in the bottom quintile of SFUSD schools ranked by Academic Performance Index scores, depending on the year.)
In retrospect, that media frenzy just looks bizarre, and the glare of the spotlight was ultimately unflattering to Edison. In any case, that particular experiment is now officially dead. In the big picture, it is sad that an effort that promised to remedy the problems facing public education couldn’t manage it. But the Edison failure demonstrates once again that it’s a mistake to put too much faith in simplistic solutions to complex problems.
Comments
You should be ashamed of yourself. You got this story all wrong and clearly did not do a lick of research. The light has not gone out for Edison. It has gotten brighter. Not only is EdisonLearning staying in the school management business, but it already has fantastic results to report. http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/prnewswire/press_releases/Pennsylvania/2008/07/09/NYW112
Next time, you should really do your homework.
The link is to an edisonlearning press release.
Do you dispute that they are doing a better job teaching children who public schools are failing to teach? Looks like they are closing the achievement gap, SFUSD sure isn't.
<<In 2002, more than 10,000 students out of 13,000 were "below basic" in math in the EdisonLearning partnership schools. Now, that number has been reduced by more than half to 4,800. In 2002, nearly 9,000 students were below basic in reading; that number has been reduced to 5,800.>>
Edison's PR claims, throughout its history, have had a tendency to clash with reality -- put it that way.
The New York Times took an openly favorable view of Edison when it wrote about the San Francisco brouhaha in spring 2001 (in the Page 1 story I mentioned). But when a more savvy reporter (Jacques Steinberg), took over the beat, he took a harder look at Edison's claims. Edison was using a methodology of its own to determine that many of its schools were showing "positive gains." Steinberg tested out applying the same methodology to the Cleveland, Ohio, schools -- a badly troubled school district -- and its "positive gains" came out higher than Edison's.
Edison recently settled a lawsuit out of court, here in Philly. A boy at one of their schools had been raped by another boy. Edison had been told before the rape that there were severe problems by the teachers union and the Philadelphia School District, but dragged their heels. Unbelievably, after the rape, they claimed that they were only managing the schools and the Philadelphia School District was in charge of school safety. Of course, they never said anything like this before they were taken to court. They have lost this school and three others. I can only hope that Edison will forfeit the remaining 16 schools in Philly they currently are running. Hopefully Philly will run them out of town like Chester did two years ago. "Whittle" 'em down!
Their test scores in Philly were not any better than the public schools. Despite what they say EMOs,charters, and such do have ways to screening out and ridding themselves of problem students. Unfortunately, the public schools do not have this option and must bear the extra burden. It is not a level playing field.
An article from Ed Week from last month paints a different picture:
--begin excerpt--
"We are still very much in the school-management and charter-school-management business. But we need to be able to partner with all reform-minded educators," said Joseph Wise, the company's chief education officer and a former superintendent of the Duval County, Fla., school district. "To do that, we have to increase our offerings as well as our delivery system."
Meanwhile, Edison founder and chairman Christopher Whittle and vice chairman Benno C. Schmidt are working on a plan to open a global chain of private schools through a related company, Nations Academy. (See Education Week, Dec. 19, 2007.)
'New Platforms'
Terry Stecz, Edison's chief executive officer, said the company is trying to find ways to create "new platforms" to improve student performance, especially since it serves many low-achieving students. It is trying to use what it has learned in running schools, he said, to become "the preferred partner for large urban systems, states, or cities." Doing that requires the ability to deliver a "continuum of solutions," including a robust array of online options, he said.
In that vein, Edison has been developing a "hybrid" school design model that would enable students to learn both through traditional classroom methods and newer technological means, Mr. Stecz said. For the past three years, Edison has also been marketing its services as a turnaround specialist for districts with, schools in need of restructuring.
The additional lines of service can help the company — which has often been criticized for "taking over" schools — reposition itself as a collaborator with a range of approaches, Mr. Stecz said. "We've learned in almost 20 years there is no one solution," he said. "So it's important to get into a community … and create a portfolio that can address many needs."
Steven Pines, the executive director of the Education Industry Association, a Rockville, Md.-based advocacy group for private-sector education companies, said he sees Edison's move as a "diversification of business strategy that is smart and in tune with market changes."
"The online marketplace is one of the hottest-growing niches in K-12," he said. "To maintain its position as a well-known education brand, Edison is probably well served to step into that virtual space."
Edison also announced that it is launching the EdisonLearning Institute, a research-and-development arm. John E. Chubb, an Edison co-founder and the company's senior executive vice president for new-product development, will be the institute's managing director.
Company aims to partner, not compete with school districts.
Who IS this newly appointed CEO? An educator? A for-profit exec? at any cost? As former CEO of North American Corp he was found guilty by the Federal Trade Commission
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!