When Public Schools Go Private

By Claudia Wallis

For more than five years, the Rev. Norman Handy has been watching the Harlem Park Community School in Baltimore, Maryland. The fortress-like building, set amid the open-air drug markets and boarded-up houses of one of the city's worst neighborhoods, is right across the street from his Unity Methodist Church. The view has not been pretty.

Up until two years ago, says Handy, the brick structure was not only decrepit but crawling with rats and mice and "roaches so big you could feel the critters move under your foot." Academically, the school, which serves 2,051 students -- prekindergarten through the eighth grade -- was in just as bad shape. On any given day, he relates, a significant number of the kids were on "disciplinary removal," hanging out unsupervised and causing trouble on the block. "I would intervene in a street fight four or five times a week," says Handy. "Every morning the white students, especially the girls, would wait until after 9 a.m. to show up, because of gang violence against them."

In 1992 Baltimore's new school superintendent, Walter Amprey, proposed a novel way of dealing with the problems at Harlem Park and eight other city schools: let someone else run them. Amprey proposed giving a five-year, $125- million contract to Education Alternatives, Inc., a Minneapolis, Minnesota, ! corporation that operated three schools in three states. Handy was among many citizens who opposed the plan: "I saw it as a subterfuge to subvert the educational process and to experiment with African-American children."

Amprey's plan prevailed, and now Handy is a convert. Today he says, "That building is an oasis in a desert of poverty, drug addiction and violence." E.A.I. invested $1.1 million up front in material improvements, computers and other supplies. It moved quickly to clean and repair the schools and take charge of security. Maintenance and financial management were contracted out for greater efficiency.

The Minnesota firm also instituted its teaching program, called "Tesseract," a name derived from a magical pathway in the children's classic A Wrinkle in Time. The program requires teachers to analyze each student's learning style and then devise an individualized plan and goals. It emphasizes parental involvement, the use of computers and continual encouragement. Posters bearing upbeat slogans abound in Tesseract schools: "Go for It!"; "Every Child Has Gifts and Talents."

The visible improvements in E.A.I. schools helped persuade the Board of Education in Hartford, Connecticut, to sign the firm to a $200 million contract earlier this month, under which it will manage the citywide system of 32 schools and 26,000 students. As in Baltimore, the decision was preceded by battles.

Chief among the critics of E.A.I. are members of the Baltimore and Hartford teachers' unions, who are, among other things, unhappy over the dismissal of Baltimore's experienced (and unionized) classroom aides. E.A.I. replaced them with recent college graduates who receive low pay and no benefits, and who tend toward high turnover. "You train them and they may be gone in six weeks," complains a teacher. Some opponents are unhappy with E.A.I.'s policy of mainstreaming nearly all special-education kids into regular classes -- a measure they regard as a cost-cutting trick that shortchanges some kids.

But the most serious criticisms concern educational performance. According to figures released by the Baltimore schools last week, test scores in reading and math have dropped slightly in the eight Tesseract elementary schools, while they rose a bit in the rest of the system. On the other hand, attendance at E.A.I. schools was up. Stunned by the report, E.A.I. immediately dispatched a team of eight independent experts to Baltimore to re-examine the test data. Company officials point out that, to begin with, E.A.I. had been handed some of the city's lowest performing schools. In addition, E.A.I.'s test takers include more special-ed kids than at other schools. A third argument: student turnover rates at the schools are very high (30% of students present in September are gone by June). "Does Tesseract work?" asks E.A.I.'s Philip Geiger. "To know that, the kids have to have been in the program." Amprey insists that "we need five years and maybe more, but we know enough to say that this concept will work."

But the larger issue for defenders of E.A.I. is whether private corporations have any business making profits off public schools in the first place. E.A.I. chairman John Golle likes to point out that plenty of companies already do: the textbook industry, private bus companies, food services, even plumbers and electricians. Bringing in professional management makes sense, he insists. "We have asked well-meaning, competent educators to supervise the fixing of the boiler room and analyze cash flow -- things they are not educated in." Most important, Golle notes, a private company is accountable. "You can cancel us and show us the door after we've invested millions up front in your district." Indeed, if test scores don't begin to rise, that may be just what Baltimore will do.

With reporting by Richard N. Ostling/Baltimore