School Privatization Is Not The Issue

The Public Strategies Group, the other private company in Minnesota that is managing public schools, is repeatedly asked: Does the decision of the Hartford and Baltimore school districts to terminate their contracts with Educational Alternatives Incorporated (EAI) set back the school privatization movement? Sure it does! But that is not the heart of the debate.

The real debate should focus on accountability for student achievement. This requires strategies for nourishing teacher excellence, parental involvement, community trust and high standards to ensure student achievement. Then the leadership question becomes which individual or organization is best able to cultivate these traits.

Our experiences managing the Minneapolis Public Schools and EAI's Baltimore and Hartford contracts offer five important lessons. Lesson 1: Strengthen the connection between schools and their communities.

News accounts from Baltimore and Hartford suggest that hiring EAI drove a wedge between segments of the school community and the school board. Understandably, groups such as the teachers' union were wary of this new form of management, as they were in Minneapolis. However, continual bickering over contract payments in Hartford and questions about the measurement of student achievement in Baltimore only widened the gap between school leadership and school communities.

Since day one, the primary goal of the Minneapolis School Board and The Public Strategies Group has been student achievement. To strengthen the commitment to that goal, we developed a covenant between students and all the participants in their success. Students crafted five statements that listed their obligations as students and summarized what they needed to be successful. Parents, teachers, principals, the superintendent, the Board, and business representatives in turn signed these statements of mutual commitment. Over 27,000 students and their parents voluntarily completed these covenants, a tremendous reminder of the necessity for all interests to be pulling in the same direction.

EAI's contracts pitted the interests of the citizens of Hartford and Baltimore against the interests of EAI stockholders. Hartford and Baltimore citizens wanted all savings from the school district reinvested in their schools for improved achievement. EAI's leadership and its shareholders wanted savings taken out of the district, in the form of profits, with the hope that the result will be rising stock prices.

In Minneapolis the School Board negotiates a pay-for-performance contract with The Public Strategies Group based on prescribed outcomes - the most important of which is improved student achievement. The contract specifies the maximum amount the district pays us if we are 100% successful. In the last 26 months we have earned about two-thirds of the maximum.

Our contract in Minneapolis does not, and should not, permit us to capture unspent district funds. If our changes save the district money, the school system benefits, not The Public Strategies Group. Since our payment is directly linked to student achievement, it is in our best corporate interest to reallocate any savings toward increasing student achievement. PSG's corporate interests are aligned with those of students, families, community members and district employees.

EAI's approach for operations improvements is to partner with Johnson Controls to run the physical plant and Peat Marwick to assist with business systems and financial management. Making these physical plant and administrative improvements probably is necessary, yet the introduction of new team players sends the implicit message that current staff range from ineffective to incompetent. This strategy never permits public employees to compete on the same playing field as their private counterparts.

In Minneapolis two years ago the district's central stores had a turnaround time of six weeks in fulfilling requests from the 80 school buildings. With encouragement and support, these public employees broke their own monopoly, reduced turn around time to less than 48 hours, and even shared their profits with teachers in the form of rebates. These public employees could run circles around most of their counterparts in private companies.

In our work across the country, we are reminded daily that there are dedicated public officials trapped in outdated, bureaucratic systems. It is the job of leadership, whether it be public or private, to unshackle these public servants and let them flourish.

In Baltimore and an earlier EAI contract in Miami, there was an on-going community debate on whether EAI-run schools were being successful. In talk shows and other public discussions, audience members from these two communities challenged EAI to make public its results. First a reluctance to set performance standards and then confusion over data analysis compromised the company's credibility.

Throughout our tenure in Minneapolis, The Public Strategies Group has sought to build a culture of accountability by setting expectations and measuring the District's progress against them. To that end, the District regularly collects and distributes results on performance indicators for the District's three goals: student achievement, community trust, and financial and managerial accountability. These indicators help the District and the community learn whether the actions being taken are producing measurable improvements for our students. When our leadership fails to deliver on these results, we are not paid.

We've also worked to build accountability at all levels in the organization. This year the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers helped develop a union contract which not only contains performance expectations for teachers but also provides school sites with incentives for improving student achievement. Included in the contract are not only stipulations for support and retraining of teachers but procedures for out placement. Building a culture of accountability takes time but progress is made only when individuals and organizations experience consequences and rewards.

With the termination of the Hartford contract, there is now a dispute about who actually owns the computers that were brought in under EAI's tenure. Inherent in this dispute is an important lesson about school transformation.

Lasting change goes much deeper than property rights. In Minneapolis we see our job as replacing yesterday's culture of fear, isolation, and failure with a culture of achievement, courage and collaboration. These are the very same traits we want from our graduates. School leaders must walk this talk, integrating these messages from the allocation of district resources to front-line efforts of improving building conditions. We succeed only if we can leave that kind of culture behind when we are gone.

In the end, it is not a question of whether private management of any public institution is inherently better than public. In fact, The Public Strategies Group strongly disagrees with the notion that private companies, because they are private, can provide better, more efficient services than can public officials. Why would we think that those who brought us the Edsel, S&L scandals, massive layoffs, greenmail, and the pet rock have all the answers?

Setbacks in Baltimore and Hartford rightfully raise questions about public-private partnerships in our public schools. Nevertheless, the essential question must focus on whether current administrative relationships are aligned with student achievement and can marshal the forces to improve on that result. Teachers, staff, and superintendents then must be held accountable for delivering this result. For school districts that means choosing the leadership group most able to deliver on this set of promises.