New approaches to education reform - contracting out public school management and other steps

Nation's Business, March, 1994 by Joan C. Szabo

When asked how Baltimore's Harlem Park Community School is faring since a private company assumed responsibility for operations, Assistant Principal Linda Carter points to marked improvement in attendance. For Harlem Park's 2,220 pupils in prekindergarten through eighth grade, the rate has risen to 98 percent from 90 percent last year. The 1992-98 attendance average for the city's elementary schools was about 92 percent, according to the Maryland Department of Education.

Lauren Boone, who has three children attending Harlem Park, says her 8-year-old was having trouble reading, but since Minneapolis-based Education Alternatives, Inc., took over, she says, her daughter's reading skills have improved a full grade level. My children enjoy school more now, and they are more enthusiastic about schoolwork," she says.

The pupils have reason to be enthusiastic. Located inn Baltimore's inner city, Harlem Park has contended with challenses familiar to the nation's urban areas: crumbling buildings, inadequate resources, flagging student achievement, rising violence. In 1992, Baltimore City Public Schools agreed to pay Education Alternatives, a management and consulting company $28 million over five years to operate Harlem Park and eight other elementary schools for profit.

Since taking over in September 1992, the company has spruced up Harlem Park's halls, lockers, and classrooms with fresh paint; removed broken glass from the school yard; installed a security system; repaired the bathrooms and heating system; eliminated vermin; and added a state-of-the-art computer lab.

To improve day-to-day operations, the company hired Johnson Controls World Services to provide cleaning, maintenance, and repairs and brought in the accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick to help with financial matters.

Teachers and administrators, who have been trained in the educational program that the company has put in place, remain employees of the Baltimore school district. The company has assigned 10 of its employees to an office in the Harlem Perk school to oversee all nine schools.

A handful of other school systems across the country ere moving toward nontraditional solutions to do a better job of preparing children for tomorrow's competitive, global marketplace, and they are turning to the private sector for help.

The relatively dismal performance of U.S. students warrants alarm. The U.S. Education Department last September reported that more than two-thirds of fourth-, eighth-, and 12th-graders were not "proficient" readers. And only 16 percent of fourth-graders, 8 percent of eighth-graders, and 9 percent of 12th-graders were able to solve and explain answers to problems that required understanding and applying mathematical principles and operations.

The challenge of reforming public education is becoming tougher, says Rexford Brown, a senior fellow at the Education Commission of the States, in Denver, because interested parties realize that systemic reform is required. Simple or quick fixes are not working. Systemic reform involves transforming the education system itself--the curriculum, assessment, professional development, and financial management--so that all students benefit.

The need for a competitive, highly skilled work force has made education a key issue for government and business alike. "What we need to do is make school excellence a national priority in every school and in every classroom," Education Secretary Richard Riley told Nation's Business.

Boosting the educational attainment of students is vital if the country is to prepare future workers for the jobs evolving today, says Res Nelson, director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Workforce Preparation. The center has spearheaded grass-roots education-reform efforts by mobilizing resources and assisting local chambers of commerce and other business leadership groups that want to foster reform.

In Baltimore, Education Alternatives receives $5,918 a year for each child; that amount is the average expenditure per pupil throughout the school district. Education Alternatives must meet certain academic goals, including improvements in students' achievement in reading, math, and other subjects.

If the company is able to spend less than the average per-pupil expenditure, it keeps a percentage of that saving as its profit.

The changes have drawn opposition from the Baltimore Teachers Union, and some teachers have asked to be transferred out of Education Alternatives schools. A lawsuit filed by the union in Circuit Court challenges the legality of the city's contract with the company. The union claimed the contract violates Baltimore's charter, which the union claims requires that the city maintain control of public schools.

The concept of private operation of public schools has the qualified support of the Clinton administration. "If contracting out for services means better, more-successful action going on in the classroom and money is gravitating toward the classroom where the teaching and learning is better, then it makes sense to look at that," Education Secretary Riley said in an interview. "But if it is some way for a company to make money and that is the purpose of it, that doesn't appeal to me from an educational standpoint,"