Profiles in Education
Chris Whittle, CEO, Edison
Schools
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
At 58 Chris Whittle, communications entrepreneur, remains
totally committed to the project that has claimed his heart
and head for the last 16 years—The Edison Schools, a
for-profit company he runs as CEO with Benno Schmidt, Chairman
of the Board, and that now boasts some remarkable numbers:
more Edison schools, less time spent closing the gap between
failing and passing students, and data that show that motives
of profit and improving public education need not be incompatible.
Indeed, says Whittle, parents he meets don’t care if
he makes a profit or not if he can help educate their children.
Though he concedes problems and has made numerous adjustments,
ever since lift off in 1992, he is as enthusiastic as ever
in pursuit of Edison goals. He loves airplane metaphors (he
calculates that for 35 years he spent at least 3 hours every
day in the air), especially when he compares the way airlines
and education run their business. Imagine being told at a ticket
counter that only 70 percent of flights will make it and that
if you’re poor you’ll fly on the cheapest, most
poorly run and maintained planes.
Relaxed, disarmingly frank about controversy and criticism
Edison has generated, and acknowledging his own need for more
pilot training (“boy was I naïve”), the youthful
looking, energetic Whittle is ever ready to publicize his flight
plans. To that end, he has written Crash Course: Imagining
a Better Future for Public Education (Riverhead Books)*
which, though drawing on hard lessons managing Edison, is essentially
about his vision of a new education paradigm and how it can
be realized. The book reflects his own crash course in analyzing
efforts at education reform—what has worked, what hasn’t
and why in the nation’s 15,000 school districts (“Books
are a “terrific way to organize your thinking”),
but primarily it presents a crash course for the reader about
what should and can be done. As oxymoronic as it may sound,
Whittle comes across as a “practical visionary”—an
eternally optimistic businessman—who, like an engineer,
keeps his eye on facts and figures. Why is it that schools
within a few blocks of one another will show one school failing,
another doing well? “We know how to run a great school,
but we don’t know how to run a great system of schools.” Where
is it written that a day’s education must all take place
in a classroom? (Edison schools are in session 10 months of
the year, an hour longer than most schools, and supplemented
by summer school tutoring.) How can students be creatively
involved in their own learning and assessment? How can teachers
be paid “double and triple” what they get now without
raising taxes? Whittle doesn’t claim to have answers
(though he does put forth some imaginative and attractive management
ideas). Rather, he argues strongly that answers can be found
through nationally funded research and development. “The
Feds spend $27 billion a year on health issues, 100 times as
much as on schools.”
Though Edison has only one charter in New York City, it runs
20 of Philadelphia’s most challenging schools in Philadelphia
(out of 250), and in just the last three years has dramatically
increased student performance on state-mandated exams. But
Whittle knows that going from 6 to 21 percent hardly constitutes “success” if,
despite such gains, students are still not “proficient.” And
so, despite continuing opposition in some quarters, he perseveres.
Pilots never take off without going though their checklist,
he points out, and he wants his schools to be involved in such “relentless
bird dogging.” That means constant diagnosis, assistance,
assessment of the over 70,000 children in the Edison schools.
He demands close accounting from his key personnel, starting
with principals, the most important part of his management
design, and from teachers and students. Every month Edison
kids go to a computer lab and see and chart their own progress.
Teachers and principals must analyze these trend lines and
follow through with specific recommendations. Whittle himself
engages in monthly “benchmark academic review,” asking
principals: “how are your students doing, have you delivered
your budget, are your customers [education partners] happy?” He
also uses Harris services in polling parents and students about
how Edison views and implementation have affected them. For
sure, Chris Whittle is never on automatic pilot.#
* A review will appear in the October issue of Education
Update.
