Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/060892/0608120.000

Text File | 1992-09-22 | 10KB | 193 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 69

Knowledge for Sale


Media mogul Chris Whittle gets a prestigious educator to head
his controversial Edison Project. But can the venture help solve
the problems facing America's public schools?

By DAVID ELLIS -- Reported by Sam Allis/Boston and Sidney
Urquhart/New York


    Call it the Perot complex: a successful businessman
achieves great wealth early in life and casts about for a higher
mission. He sees the paralysis gripping a big national problem
and decides the only course is radical change. Ross Perot wants
to change the country from the White House; Chris Whittle wants
to alter the future from your child's classroom.

    The media mogul plans to create a new system of private
schooling that he hopes will produce a smarter generation of
American kids -- and make him and his partners a profit as well.
He also expects to inspire -- indeed, compel -- the existing
public school system to change the way it instills knowledge.
"Kids today are disconnected from the education process," says
Whittle. "We need to figure out how they are motivated and tap
into that." At this point Whittle's enterprise is little more
than an ambitious blue-sky notion, yet it is attracting
considerable interest and some high-level talent: Yale President
Benno Schmidt last week resigned his post to head the venture.

    Schmidt brings a great deal of credibility to the project.
Nonetheless, some educators wonder if access to schooling, long
considered one of the most vital public missions of a democratic
society, should be entrusted to people also concerned with the
bottom line. Critics of the venture argue that it diverts energy
and attention from efforts to reform the public education
system from within. Every other major democracy educates its
children in public schools, they say, so why should the U.S.
rely on entrepreneurs? Schmidt's reply: "We need the freedom to
try to create new conceptions on a completely clean slate,
without the constraints of inherited institutions. I don't think
gradual reform is likely to produce the improvements the country
desperately needs."

    Whittle has already rankled many traditionalists with his
profitable Channel One television network. That controversial
venture provides a 12-minute morning newscast, complete with two
minutes of commercials, to 7.8 million students each weekday.
"I dread the thought of the profit motive infiltrating a noble
area of public aspiration," says educator Jonathan Kozol. "Do
we really want to give that power to Chris Whittle?"

    Yet there is a consensus among education experts that the
public school system is in desperate need of change, which helps
explain why many greet Whittle's project with cautious optimism.
"The important thing is that kids have a chance to learn," says
Gregory Anrig, president of the Educational Testing Service. "If
Whittle or anyone else can open up some doors, that's a good
thing."

    The plan, called the Edison Project, envisions a
nationwide chain of at least 100 for-profit grammar schools by
1996, serving 150,000 students. By the end of this decade,
additional campuses would open, providing day care and primary
and secondary education for 2 million students. Tuition for
individual students would not exceed the $5,500 current average
spent on each child now in public education.

    Whittle is confident that private schooling is an
investment with the potential to bring a 15% annual return. "The
motive of profit and the motive for public good are not mutually
exclusive," says Whittle, a stylish 44-year-old who sports fancy
bow ties and a shaggy hairstyle. "We are a private institution
with a public mission." He has already attracted commitments of
$60 million from corporate interests for research and
development (including Time Warner, parent company of TIME,
which owns 37% of Whittle Communications). Whittle will have to
raise an additional $3 billion to implement his plans fully.

    A team of experts from the fields of education, business
and journalism has been working out the details of the school
system since March. The eclectic group includes Chester Finn
Jr., a former Assistant Secretary of Education in the Reagan
Administration; John Chubb, an expert on government and public
policy; and Lee Eisenberg, the former editor in chief of
Esquire.

    The planning group dismisses the notion that the only way
to impart knowledge is to place a teacher in front of a small
group. Technology would play a primary role in Whittle's new
classroom. Each Whittle school would be linked by closed-circuit
television to a central studio, which might result in a 1-to-1
million teacher-to-student ratio. Interactive electronic data
banks would allow students to do comprehensive research on their
own. Notebook computers would be as common as lunch boxes.

    Over the next two years, the team will design an ambitious
core curriculum, which will assume that today's high school
education could be completed by a Whittle pupil by the age of
12. The first schools will initially accept children only from
three months to six years of age. With each succeeding year,
another class can be added, as the system grows along with its
first generation of students. Whittle is leaning toward a
"campus" approach for the schools, with all grades (including
day-care facilities) located at the same site. Working parents
are to be offered flexible class times to accommodate their
schedules. Admission would be open to everyone. To broaden
access, 20% of students would be given full scholarships.
Whittle plans effectively to redistribute wealth from richer
schools to districts populated mainly by the poor.

    Some of the other planned innovations, however, seem
clearly driven by the need to cut costs. Teachers might make up
only 30% of the total instructional force. The private schools
would try to harness the talents of pupils in a variety of ways,
including expecting students to tutor their peers as a way to
develop leadership ability. Parents could be asked to work one
day a month on a volunteer basis, helping out in the day-care
center or study hall.

    The teachers who join the new schools would be asked to
exchange the security of tenure for a potentially lucrative
equity stake in the company. Their base salary would be
augmented by performance bonuses, a feature that could attract
the type of highly motivated, career-oriented men and women who
today tend to shun teaching in favor of better-paying
professions. Whittle's application of free-market techniques to
schooling is what most troubles his critics, who fear that the
traditional interaction between teachers and students will get
lost amid the high-tech gadgetry and the chase for profits.

    Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch thinks the
traditionalists aren't recognizing the benefits that come with
competition, and says they must abandon the attitude that "if
everyone can't have it for free, don't do it at all." She is
convinced that examples set by for-profit schools like Whittle's
will spur positive change across the board. "You are not
betraying the American ideal if you leave a public school," says
Ravitch. "It doesn't matter where kids go to school, as long as
they get a good education."

    The Bush Administration strongly supports the concepts
that underlie the Edison Project, but Education Secretary Lamar
Alexander has not endorsed the plan publicly because he once
served as a consultant to Whittle Communications and used to own
stock in the company. Alexander has issued an "America 2000"
program to encourage innovative, "break the mold" schools.

    Although Whittle's group is not directly federally funded,
another Bush reform could benefit the Edison schools. The
President's Choice Plan would give parents vouchers that would
in effect transfer tax money to whatever school their child
attends, even if it is a parochial or private institution. The
voucher plan appears politically dead for now, but many
observers believe Whittle's long-term plan anticipates the use
of these funds. If adopted, the reform could funnel billions of
public dollars into private schools.

    Whittle is confident that his concept for new schools will
be able to survive, even without government assistance, and
stay ahead of any potential competitor. "Twenty years from now,
there will be three or four major private providers of
education," he says. "We will be just the first to get there."

    Perhaps. But Whittle's plan leaves many questions
unanswered. What about the vast majority of American kids who
must continue to rely on public schools? Will they be the
victims of a new system of separate but unequal education --
this one based not on race but on income and geography? If
Whittle's mission is not simply to educate but to educate for
a profit, what happens to his franchise -- and its clients --
if the profits dry up? Do the schools just close their doors or
pick up stakes and move to greener pastures, as other industries
would do? And if educational entrepreneurs like Whittle succeed
at making the public system collapse -- playing "West Berlin"
to the publics' "East Berlin," as he put it last week -- what
guarantee is there that private providers would or could pick
up the slack? Whether the Edison Project becomes yet another
failed reform experiment or an agent for meaningful change
depends on how well Whittle combines the profit motive with
quality education.