Don’t Draw the Wrong Lesson : School privatization failures in other states should not shut the door here

Poor test scores and spiraling costs are as much a part of most big-city school systems as reading, writing and arithmetic. The twin challenges of improving academic achievement and reducing spending often stump school boards. So, it is not surprising that some elected officials have turned the administration of schools over to private management firms.

What is surprising and disappointing is the failure of several well-known privatization efforts to make good on their ambitious promises to rescue children who aren’t learning and to save money.

Is there a lesson for California in the experiences of Hartford, Conn., and Baltimore, where private educational management teams took over large numbers of schools, promised speedy progress and delivered much less at great expense? While there is no parallel situation in this state, many California parents have similar frustrations.

In California, parents, politicians, business leaders and just about everyone else demand better public schools. The challenge is how to achieve that goal before this year’s crop of kindergartners finishes high school.

In Los Angeles, LEARN’s consensus approach is trying to keep everyone on board, including administrators, educators, unions and parents, reducing the potential for conflict that hurt for-profit privatization efforts in Baltimore. LEARN’s methods of achieving incremental success on individual campuses can provide some lessons for the for-profit managers. So can charismatic principals like Yvonne Chan, who runs a charter school in Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley.

The most successful privatization efforts tackle a small number of schools or target a niche group, such as children who need remedial help or children who are disciplinary problems. For-profit education firms are having modest success with individual schools or limited campuses in Boston and Minneapolis.

Blanket privatization is not the best approach for a huge and beleaguered school system, but the isolated failures in Hartford and Baltimore should not be cited to discourage experimentation in hopes of saving public schools.