State Takeover, School Restructuring, Private Management, and Students Achievement in Philadelphia

the restructuring of the lowest-achieving public schools in Philadelphia reach

different conclusions about whether private management has improved student

achievement. Because similar restructuring reform is promoted by the federal No

Child Left Behind law, these studies have important national implications. Both

studies have flaws, however, and neither study is yet sufficient to make

definitive claims about the effects of Philadelphia’s school restructuring

reform.

The two reports reviewed are State Takeover, School

Restructuring, Private Management, and Student Achievement in Philadelphia released by the RAND Corporation in partnership with Research for Action (RFA);

and School Reform in Philadelphia: A Comparison of Student Achievement at

Privately-Managed Schools with Student Achievement in Other District Schools published by the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at Harvard

University.

The reports were reviewed for the Think Twice think tank

review project by Derek Briggs, a professor at the University of Colorado at

Boulder.

Both reports attempt to assess the impact of a school

reform in Philadelphia. Starting in 2002, the city’s school district

restructured its 86 lowest-achieving elementary and middle schools. The most

prominent approaches shifted school management to either the district or to one

of several private companies. The reports examine the impact of private or

district management on student achievement in math and reading.

The RAND-RFA paper concludes that private management had no

impact on math or reading achievement, while district management had a positive

effect on math achievement but none on reading. The PEPG paper, meanwhile,

reached virtually the opposite conclusion. It found private management has had a

positive effect on the performance of lower-scoring students in math and

reading, while district management had no measurable effect.

In his review, Briggs indicates that the different findings

can largely be explained by the fact that PEPG did not have the same access to

data as did RAND-RFA. He also identifies and describes the methodological

weaknesses in both reports.

Briggs concludes: “These two studies, read together, do

contribute to our understanding of Philadelphia’s experience. Yet, although the

RAND-RFA study sheds more light on that experience than does the PEPG study,

neither study offers a complete picture, and more research is needed before

drawing any definitive conclusions.”

Find the complete review by Derek Briggs as well as links

to the PEPG and RAND-RFA reports on the web at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org .

About Think Twice

The Think Twice project provides the public, policy makers

and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank

publications. It is a collaboration of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory

at Arizona State University and the Education and the Public Interest Center at

the University of Colorado at Boulder and is funded by the Great Lakes Center

for Education Research and Practice.

Kevin Welner, the project co-director and editor, explains

that the project is needed because “despite their garnering of media attention

and their influence with many policy makers, reports released by private think

tanks can be of very poor quality. We don’t consider our reviews to be the final

word, nor is our goal to stop think tanks’ contributions to a public dialogue.

That dialogue is, in fact, what we value the most. The best ideas come about

through rigorous critique and debate.”

The mission of

the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is to identify,

develop, support, publish and widely disseminate empirically sound

research on education policy and practices designed to improve the quality

of public education for all students within the Great Lakes Region.

Visit the Great Lakes

Center website at: http://www.greatlakescenter.or g

Contact:
Derek Briggs (303) 492-6320
(email) Derek.Briggs@Colorado.EDU