State Chooses 3 Companies To Run Pa. District's Schools

By Robert C. Johnston

Hoping to reverse years of low student achievement and mismanagement, the Pennsylvania control board that is running the Chester-Upland schools took the dramatic step last week of hiring three for-profit companies to run 11 of its 14 schools.

The move means that private-sector managers will shoulder significant responsibility for the education of all 7,500 students in the urban district south of Philadelphia. Three of the district's schools already were run as independent charter schools. While districts nationwide increasingly are turning to the private sector to run schools, Chester-Upland appears to be the largest district to contract out the operation of all its schools.

"We wanted to create a level of competition," said Thomas E. Persing, the president of the three-member state board of control that announced the...