Phila. schools managed by for-profit companies post better math scores, study says

New management by an outside company may help some of Philadelphia's failing schools make the grade.

A recent study by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government professor Paul Peterson and Harvard graduate student Matt Chingos shows that students in schools managed by for-profit companies performed better in math than those in regular public schools.

They also performed better than students in schools run by nonprofit organizations, such as Penn.

Chingos and Peterson have been conducting research on the Philadelphia school system for about two years, Chingos said.

They have studied scores from students in regular schools and the "lower half" of schools receiving intervention by for-profit and nonprofit companies, he added.

First, they compared student performance at the regular schools before and after the study and found the percentage of increase for those schools.

They assumed the same increase in managed schools, then looked at "what actually happened," Chingos added.

This final analysis showed that the difference in the gains made by for-profit-managed schools and nonprofit-managed ones is "very big," he said.

Because of the difference, Chingos was surprised that last June, the district revoked the contracts of five for-profit-managed schools and only one nonprofit-managed school.

"I would have thought that they would have done the opposite," Chingos said.

Of these schools, four were operated by Edison Schools Inc., one by Victory Schools - both education management companies - and one by Temple University, said Vincent Thompson, a School District of Philadelphia spokesman.

Their contracts were revoked because "they were not performing to our satisfaction," Thompson said.

The two schools operated by Penn - Lea Elementary School and Wilson Elementary School - were granted a three-year renewal contract, Thompson added.

Currently, 32 schools managed by for-profit companies and six managed by nonprofits have contracts lasting for at least one year.

The Philadelphia School District is "committed to the diverse provider model and all of our education-management organizations operate under performance-based contracts holding them to stipulated standards of accountability," according to its response to the study released on Feb. 10.

Still, the district will continue to monitor the progress of managed schools each year, Thompson said.

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