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Educational management organizations: Another failed solution
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Vaughan Byrnes, a researcher from Johns Hopkins University, has recently published a study on Philadelphia’s experiment with letting private companies run public schools: “the achievement growth rate of schools run by educational management organizations (EMOs) had fallen significantly below the growth rate of district-run schools in both reading and mathematics.” As with all educational research, the conclusions are not quite conclusive, and the data is messy. However, it would be safe to say that private management of public schools did not produce remarkable improvement some people were hoping for.
Indeed, it was really unclear why did people think otherwise? The public schooling is dysfunctional as an institution. Letting different people run a district does not change the fundamentals. Just because someone is working for a for-profit company does not make him or her any smarter, more creative, or more organized than a government official. If you had a bunch of American businessmen replace the Politburo, they would not be able save the Soviet Union, would they?
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