AFT Report Disputes Claims by Edison Project

By Mark Walsh

Achievement results in the Edison Project's schools are less impressive than the private, for-profit company presents them, according to an analysis of testing data by the American Federation of Teachers.

The teachers' union, a longtime critic of the privatization of public education, contends that Edison emphasizes, and sometimes overstates, the academic gains at a few of its schools while playing down negative or inconclusive data from others.

"On the whole, Edison results were mediocre," the report says in referring to one set of reading studies in the...