Case IV: Private Operation of Public Schools in Houston, Texas (10
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Case IV: Private operation of public schools in Houston, Texas (10 February) Yale University Political Science Department PLSC 240 Spring 2009 John Bryan Starr Case IV: Private operation of public schools in Houston, Texas Table of Contents The case 3 Exhibit #1: For-profit schools in the United States 5 Exhibit #2: Public opinion regarding for-profit schools 6 Document #1: Julie Light, “The Education Industry: The Corporate 6 Takeover of Public Schools,” CorpWatch, July 8, 1998 at www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=889 Document #2: Alex Molnar, Giving kids the business: The commercialization of 9 America’s schools (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001) Chapter IV, “Schools for profit: Follow the yellow brick road” Document #3: Alex Molnar, Gary Miron and Jessica Urschel, Profiles of For- 15 Profit Education Management Organizations: 2007-2008 (Tempe, AZ: Commercialism in Education Research Union, College of Education, Arizona State University, 2008) Document #4: Henry M. Levin, “Potential of For-Profit Schools for 29 Educational Reform,” International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education (2003) Document #5: Brian Hassel, “Friendly Competition,” Education Next 43 (Winter 2003) Document #6: Government Accountability Office, “Comparison of 52 Achievement Results for Students Attending Privately Managed and Traditional Schools In Six Cities,” (Washington, DC: GAO, 2003) Document #7: Patricia Burch, Matthew Steinberg and Joseph Donovan 62 (University of Wisconsin—Madison), “Supplemental Educational Services and NCLB: Policy Assumptions, Market Practices, Emerging Issues,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 29:2 (June 2007). Background information on Houston and its public schools 86 Exhibit #3: Population 86 Exhibit #4: School system statistics 89 Exhibit #5: Houston school governance 91 Document #8: Julie Bennett, “Brand-Name Charters,” Education Next 8:3 92 (Summer 2008) 1 Case IV: Private operation of public schools in Houston, Texas Document #9: Steven F. Wilson, Learning on the Job: When Business Takes on 99 Public Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006) Excerpts. Document #10: Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), KIPP: Report Card 117 2007 (available at http://www.kipp.org.) Document #11: Jennifer Radcliffe and Gary Scharrer, “Decade of change 135 for charter schools; Experts say spotty success keeps them from competing with traditional system,” Houston Chronicle, December 17, 2006. Document #12: Jennifer Radcliffe and Ericka Mellon, “KIPP Academy 138 takes big step; Celebrated Houston charter to add 35 campuses in the area over the next 10 years,” The Houston Chronicle, March 20, 2007. Exhibit #6: KIPP Schools in Houston: Growth and Projected 142 Growth Document #13: Editorial: “Gifted and Talented; KIPP expansion is great 142 news for 21,000 lucky youngsters and should be for others as well,” The Houston Chronicle, March 25, 2007. Document #14: Mike Tolson, “KIPP’s experiment moving to grand scale; 144 Charter school on way to major expansion thanks to donations,” The Houston Chronicle, April 2, 2007. Document #15: Ericka Mellon, “Can HISD copy success of charter 147 schools?; Longer day plan might work, but it would cost the district millions,” The Houston Chronicle, April 29, 2007. Document #16: Todd Hveem, “Principal teaches pupils to keep college in 149 mind; Daniel Caesar says developing character skills just as important,” The Houston Chronicle, October 27, 2005. Document #17: Ericka Mellon, “Finding principals gets tougher; The 151 competition intensifies as HISD is forced to battle charter schools for the top candidates,” The Houston Chronicle, July 26, 2007. Document #18: Jennifer Radcliffe, “They’re intrepid; KIPP’s newest 153 campus here welcomes 89 fifth-graders; 10th Houston school to be joined in 2009 by 4 more,” The Houston Chronicle, July 1, 2008. Suggested Study Group Questions 154 Appendix #1: Last year’s clarifying questions 155 2 Case IV: Private operation of public schools in Houston, Texas The case. In our fourth foray into the troubled waters of school choice we look at the world of EMO’s—“educational maintenance organizations”—that propose to make profits from taking over the operation of some or all of the functions of a public school system. We have encountered the arguments in support of privatization of public education in our last two case studies. Education bureaucracies are bloated and inefficient. Private education corporations will operate schools more efficiently and effectively because they are in competition to attract a clientele. Economies of scale will allow large corporations running many schools and even districts to provide quality education at lower cost. Entering the educational arena anew, private corporations may succeed in loosening the logjams created by years of deadlocked contract negotiations between school districts and teachers unions. Opponents of privatization argue that keeping school for profit is morally wrong because it undercuts the civic purposes of public education. They question whether there is fat in the public system that, once trimmed by privatization, will make school systems more cost-efficient, and they point to the failure of private education companies to turn a profit as confirmation of their opinion. Those of a paranoid persuasion take these arguments one step further, contending that the complex apparatus of the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation is actually a covert scheme to discredit public schools and to replace them with voucher- funded for-profit school systems. As of school year 2007-08, 50 for-profit companies were operating 553 schools in 28 states, enrolling about 254,500 students, or 0.5% of public school students nationwide. The case begins with a series of documents describing the scope of the work of EMO’s in American public education. We will learn that there are several types of EMO’s. Some are publicly owned corporations, others are privately owned. Some are for-profit corporations, others are not-for-profit organizations. Some operate as direct service providers from a central headquarters, others operate as a chain of franchises. This section of the casebook also contains reports that attempt to evaluate privately-administered schools against their public counterparts. Finally, an article describes a new niche market for EMO’s—that of providing “Supplementary Educational Services” (SES) or after- school tutoring to districts whose schools have failed to make “adequate yearly progress” under the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. The largest and most highly-publicized EMO is the Edison Project. Founded by entrepreneur Chris Whittle in 1992 Edison attracted Yale President Benno Schmidt to become its CEO. At the height of its growth in the 2000-03 the company operated 150 schools in 23 states with an enrollment of 132,000 students. The company has been in operation for sixteen years and has yet to turn a profit. Indeed, from its founding through June 2003 the company chalked up $282 million in losses, strongly calling into question the idea that there is money to be made in the private operation of public schools. 3 Case IV: Private operation of public schools in Houston, Texas Our case for this week involves one EMO—the Knowledge Is Power Program—and focuses particularly in its burgeoning collection of schools in the Houston Independent School District. Founded by Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, a pair of frustrated fifth- grade Teach for America teachers, KIPP involves a new, intensive teaching approach, that the two pounded out “all in one night in the fall of 1993 while U2 played endlessly in the background.”1 The pair opened their first charter schools—one in Houston, one in the Bronx—in the fall of 1995. The schools feature an extended day and school year, a highly structured curriculum, contracts to promote parent participation, and a strong emphasis on setting students’ sights on college admission. Believing that school leadership is the key to success, training potential principals is a major focus of the work of the national organization. The organization has attracted major funding from foundations and operates on a franchise basis. Beginning with middle schools, the organization has expanded downward into pre-K through grade 6 schools, and upward into high schools. Of the 57 KIPP schools currently in operation (spanning 17 states and the District of Columbia), 55 are public charter schools, and two are district contract schools. Together, these schools currently serve more than 14,000 students nationwide. As we will see, the improved student learning that takes place within KIPP schools is impressive and has been sustained over time. The case raises several essential questions. Does the private management of these schools in fact undermine their civic purpose as public schools? Does the highly structured KIPP approach to education stifle students’ access to higher level thinking skills, or is it a necessary remedy for the lack of discipline and preparation that many students bring with them as they enter school? And, finally, do the KIPP schools constitute a threat to the school districts within which they operate, or can they serve as models for how district schools might be restructured to improve student performance? • • • 1 Mike Tolson, “KIPP’s experiment moving to grand scale; Charter school on way to major expansion thanks to donations,” The Houston Chronicle, April 2, 2007 (Document #14 below.) 4 Case IV: Private operation of public schools in Houston, Texas