District 150’s school board is trying to decide what to do about Edison Schools. Lots of parents like it, apparently, and so the district is considering replicating the program in-house to save money. But according to estimates recently released by the administration and reported in the Journal Star, it would cost almost a million dollars more than their current Edison Schools contract to replicate the program in-house. Now some parents are saying we should keep Edison because it’s cheaper.

My question is, why would we want to replicate it, let alone keep it? Take a look at the rankings below (click the “Show More” button if you’re not reading the permalink) and tell me what you notice about Edison schools compared to the rest of District 150’s schools. What I see is not much difference in student performance — certainly not $1.57 million worth of difference (the cost of the contract plus implementation). Is this the “world class education for every child” Edison promises in their promotional literature?

That there is little difference in performance should come as no surprise. The Rand Corporation recently released a study on Edison and other private for-profit companies that manage schools in Philadelphia. They found the same thing: “Within Philadelphia, the schools managed by private providers were doing neither better nor worse than districtwide achievement trends.” There is no reason to believe that these results would be unique to Philadelphia.

Instead of haggling over replication costs, the school board should simply fire Edison altogether and put together a restructuring plan of their own, based on what’s been proven to work in Peoria. District 150 has several successful schools from which to get ideas, such as Lindbergh Middle School and Kellar Primary School. Charter Oak, Von Steuben, and Whittier also did better than three out of four Edison schools.

Why not replicate success?

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