The Philadelphia Experiment

Marla Blakney's fifth-grade classroom is the front line in the nation's largest experiment in privately run public schools. And on a muggy fall morning in Room 308 at Harrity Elementary School, the troops are doing the Macarena. Arms crossing, hips swiveling, 24 Philadelphia schoolchildren are shouting a mantra--"Wisdom! Justice! Courage!..."--that is supposed to create the lively but respectful classroom environment that can elude even good teachers. And to their skeptical teacher's amusement, it seems to be working. "When Edison taught us this, I thought, 'This is so corny. My kids won't go for it,'" says Blakney, whose building was taken over this fall by the for-profit company Edison Schools. "But it's a new year. I'm giving it a try."

Like Blakney, other teachers as well as students and administrators in Philadelphia's worst-performing elementary and middle schools have been forced to undertake some radical changes this year after a reform panel awarded control of 45 failing schools in the city to seven independent operators. The outside contractors include Edison, based in New York City and the largest of the companies that manage public schools as a business; Victory Schools, a much smaller New York City firm with schools in that city aswell as in Baltimore, Md.; and the Chancellor Beacon Academies of Coconut Grove, Fla., which operates charter schools and private day schools around the country. Two nonprofit organizations were also given schools to run, and both Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania will provide extensive services atothers. In addition, the panel hired Paul Vallas,who oversaw major reforms in Chicago's schools, as its new district CEO. Butmosteyes, in Philadelphia and around the nation, are focused on the for-profit companies that ambitiously, and controversially, aim to improve failing public schools while rewarding private investors.

How well Philadelphia's children fare in these real-life laboratories will ultimately touch public schools in every corner of the U.S., offering examples to emulate or mistakes to avoid. As the experiment begins, TIME is following three individuals with a direct stake in the outcome: fifth-grade teacher Blakney, elementary-school principal Anita Duke andseventh-grade student Shaliah Denmark. All three will experience what happens when private hands buy the books, train the teachers and set the priorities. Each has her own degree of optimism about the promised reforms. TIME will return to them later in the school year for a report card on how those changes--and their feelings about them--have progressed.

THE TEACHER