Education: Grading The Philadelphia Experiment

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Schoolkids aren't the only ones in Philadelphia praying for a good report card this month. Last fall, with most of the city's students testing well below state averages in reading and math, Philadelphia's assertive new schools chief, Paul Vallas, handed over control of 45 of the city's worst schools to seven private operators, including nonprofit organizations, universities and, most controversially, three for-profit companies. Now that the school year is ending, everyone is looking to see how the newcomers have done. Vallas has already given privatization a qualified endorsement by reaching agreements with six of the seven managers on contract terms for next year. This week a critical batch of test scores will provide the first hard data on how students have fared under privatization, a wrenching process that involved new principals, teaching methods, rules and expectations.

As with most education reforms, it will take years before researchers can declare this one a success or a failure. But throughout the school year, TIME has followed three individuals who have been at the center of this ambitious experiment: fifth-grade teacher Marla Blakney, seventh-grade student Shaliah Denmark and elementary school principal Anita Duke. All three spent the past nine months in Philadelphia public schools that had been taken over by for-profit operators. Their experiences tell a more nuanced story than the one predicted by privatization's cheerleaders and critics when TIME first wrote about them and their schools last fall.

The Teacher

When Edison Schools, the New York City--based company that is the largest of the for-profit firms, was awarded 20 Philadelphia schools to manage last spring, student protesters waved signs that read I AM NOT FOR SALE! SAY NO TO PRIVATIZATION! But by the time an Edison team arrived at Harrity Elementary School in the poverty-ravaged southwestern part of the city last September, the staff was ready to try anything. "It couldn't have gotten any worse," says Marla Blakney, a raspy-voiced fifth-year teacher who has an exceptionally warm rapport with her students. "We were so sick of failing."

In the first month of school, Edison introduced new math and reading programs, reduced the size of reading classes, eliminated some nonteaching staff, added more time for teacher training and brought in a computerized monthly testing program. "They were so much in our faces in the beginning," says Blakney, a former accountant. "I have never worked so hard in my life, including in the corporate world." As her school's math coordinator, Blakney was charged with mastering the challenging new math curriculum and teaching it to her colleagues. She also ran the math club and served on the school's leadership team, which makes instructional and discipline decisions. Like all the other teachers at the Edison schools, she was trained in new techniques--the use of cheers, chants and catchphrases like "three-inch voices"--designed to help keep a class orderly without resorting to drill-sergeant discipline.