Study shows math advances in Phila. for-profit schools

Students in the city's public schools that are managed by for-profit companies perform better in math than those attending schools run by the Philadelphia School District, according to a study released yesterday by two Harvard University researchers.

In a few months, the district must decide whether to continue using the controversial outside management firms, which operate 28 city public schools with 13,400 children. The report was partially funded by Edison Schools Inc., one of five management firms in Philadelphia.

The providers are paid an annual total of $6.7 million by the district; their contracts expire in June.

Last year, the School Reform Commission seized six schools from private managers and warned the operators that unless their other schools improved significantly this year, their contracts would not be renewed.

The Harvard study, conducted by Paul Peterson, a professor of government, and researcher Matthew Chingos, stands in contrast to earlier studies on privately managed schools here.

Two 2007 reports - including one by the Accountability Review Council, an independent body monitoring school improvement in Philadelphia - concluded that the academic gains made by the outside managers were not sufficient to warrant continued funding by the district.

Touted as the core of reform in a Republican-led state takeover of the schools, privatization came to the district in 2002. With Philadelphia in the national vanguard, officials at one point considered turning over the entire district to Edison; ultimately, it put just 45 schools under private managers, some of whom dropped out on their own.

Today, two for-profit companies, Edison and Victory Schools, run 20 schools. Three nonprofits, Foundations Inc., Universal Companies and the University of Pennsylvania, manage eight schools.

The Harvard researchers stated in their study that "students learned substantially more in reading and math if they attended a school under for-profit . . . management."

In each of the last six years, the study said, students in schools operated by for-profit firms learned about 60 percent more in math than if the school had been district-run. The difference in reading was negligible.

The study also compared the for-profit schools to those of the nonprofit operators and found that students in the former learned at least 70 percent more in math in a year, and about two-thirds more in reading.

The study called into question the district's decision last year to return some of the schools to its control.

"If math and reading are given equal weight in evaluating a school, these results provide no support for the district's decision to terminate the for-profit management contracts," the study said.

At the time, district officials said they removed outside managers from schools on the basis of test scores and climate. Most of the schools returned to district control were Edison schools.

Sherrine Wilkins, executive director for school services at the nonprofit Foundations Inc., said that she had not had time to digest the study, but that she was pleased with student progress at the company's four remaining schools.

"Regardless of what the report may say, all we know is that our schools have made substantial and consistent progress over the years," Wilkins said.

Cecilia Cummings, a district spokeswoman, said officials also had not had time to thoroughly review the study and could not comment on specifics. However, she emphasized that the district remained committed to the so-called diverse-provider model of school operations and has performance-based contracts for all outside managers.

"We remain fully engaged," Cummings said, "in replicating those approaches that work."