Magnifisyncopathological

The AP via CNN: Pennsylvania school privatization effort collapses

Pennsylvania's first major experiment in school privatization is coming to an ugly end in this poverty-stricken city of abandoned buildings, vacant lots and closed-down shipyards on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

Edison Schools, a for-profit company hired four years ago to run eight of the city's nine schools, is pulling out in June, partly because it has not gotten paid about $4 million in fees.

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Edison at the mercy of local officials when it came to control over the district's finances and getting the information it needed to do its job.

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Edison also found itself in a perpetual three-way power struggle with the board and the central administration. The contract did not allow Edison to hire or fire teachers. The company also did not control the district's finances and had limited ability to shift resources to places that needed them. It was not involved in generating the faulty information that hid the system's budget deficit.

Edison's Tucker said the company struggled just to get accurate information from the district on student enrollment.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.