Seven Hills Goes Its Own Way
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12-A five-year study of the Edison Schools concludes that gains made by the for-profit school management company’s students eventually at least match the gains by students in conventional public schools.
Nevertheless, Seven Hills Charter School in Worcester is preparing to end its association with Edison after a decade because school officials feel that it can achieve greater results on its own.
The study, titled “Inspiration, Perspiration and Time,” was released Tuesday by the RAND research group. The report’s authors call the study impartial even though it was commissioned by Edison.
Edison Schools operates 103 schools across the country using a program that RAND researcher Brian Gill said included a rigorous curriculum and assessment, accountability and professional development programs for teachers and administrators. The company has management authority over the charter and district schools it runs and can have greater control over staffing, salaries and schedules than conventional public schools, depending on its contracts with individual school districts.
Mr. Gill and fellow researcher Laura Hamilton said the report showed that Edison Schools on average experience declines in achievement scores the first year they adopt the Edison model but make gains after that. After the first year, Edison students would make gains but still lag behind comparison schools for the first three years of operation. By their fifth year, the report said, Edison School students were “generally keeping up with, but not surpassing, comparison schools.”
Nancy Van Meter, director of accountability and privatization at the National Federation of Teachers, questioned the importance of retention data that showed that 85 percent of schools stayed with Edison for four years, saying it was “not a shocker” that school districts did not break their contracts and pay penalties to Edison. She said that approximately 50 percent of the schools that have contracted with Edison in the last ten years are not Edison schools now.
Edison Schools have mainly appeared in inner-city areas like the Seven Hills neighborhood, although Edison chief academic officer John Chubb said the program is not especially designed for disadvantaged students. He said the program has a strong academic orientation with high expectations and is not a remedial program. He attributed the number of Edison Schools in poorer areas to parent dissatisfaction with public schools.
Mr. Chubb said the study reinforces “the importance of the integrity of the program” and the need for schools to adopt the whole model and not modify it to fit their own concerns. For example, he said, the Edison program calls for longer school days and a longer school year, which can be unpopular with teachers. The success of the program depended, Mr. Chubb said, on “the powers that be not giving in to pressures” such as the teachers’ complaints.
Mr. Chubb said teachers should be paid for their extra commitment of time. Ms. Van Meter said that while Edison Schools generally paid a slight premium on starting salary for teachers, the amount did not cover all the additional hours. The RAND report and Edison Schools officials blame the initial dip in scores at converted Edison Schools partly on a lack of adherence to the program, and Mr. Chubb said the company now offers additional support to new schools to help them conform better. However, after a decade of taking Edison’s core curriculum and personalizing it to better fit its students’ needs, principal Krista Osborn said Seven Hills has “a pretty good understanding of what we need ourselves.” Ms. Osborn said Edison was “extremely helpful” when Seven Hills was getting started, providing essential support services and helping to establish the curriculum. It is now more efficient for the school to provide its own administrative services, she said, and Seven Hills has pulled ahead of the Edison learning curve in curriculum as well. Ms. Osborn said Seven Hills has made a number of innovations on its own that seem to be yielding results for its students. For example, the school uses Edison’s core “Success for All” reading program but has added extra “fluency tools” to help individual students improve their skills. In math, the school still uses Edison’s “Everyday Mathematics” curriculum for most grades but has modified it to better prepare students for the more language-based math portion of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. Seven Hills is the only remaining Edison School in Massachusetts, and, Ms. Osborn said, “Our needs weren’t catered to” by the company. “There is a strict belief [at Edison] that everyone should follow the same strategy at the same time and it will work,” she said. She said Seven Hills’ philosophy is to use the Edison curriculum as a starting place and go from there. Seven Hills’ elementary school scores rank in the middle for Worcester, she said, but its junior high school is near the top.
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