Philadelphia schools seek for-profit help

Next month, Philadelphia is expected to launch the most audacious education reform plan ever in the United States, one that would hand administration of the nation's seventh-largest school system, along with dozens of its worst-performing schools, to a for-profit company, Edison Schools Inc.

The plan is drawing fierce criticism, with Mayor John Street calling it "fantasyland."

But what's really fantasyland -- or, more exactly, parents and taxpayers wish it were a fantasy-- is for any state to be shelling out $10,000 and more per student with results as dismal as those in Philadelphia.

One school in that city is, sadly, typical: 71 percent of fourth-graders lack basic math skills, and 45 percent read poorly or can't read at all.

Students of urban districts across America, including St. Louis and Kansas City, are grimly familiar with such dreary results. And always, from those currently in charge, comes the demand for still more money.

Edison is a leading educational company that already runs 136 schools with 75,000 students. These include several among the 17 promising charter schools currently up and running in Kansas City. Last year, Baltimore turned to Edison to run three elementary schools. One school scored impressive gains in math and reading scores.

There is nothing wrong, and potentially much that is right, with turning to private, for-profit management to run America's schools, especially those that are so badly failing the mostly minority children trapped in the inner city.

This would only seem shocking to those who don't know that this is precisely what has been going on for years now. The unpleasant fact is that our inner-city public-school bureaucracies are among the most dysfunctional and grossly wasteful aggregations of folly anywhere. They are really quite indefensible.

If it takes private management to come in and restore some sanity, then bring it on.