A Lesson in Mismanagement

In 1995 Cerf's colleagues were able to convince Miami-Dade County Public Schools administrators, school board members, and the powerful United Teachers of Dade (UTD) union that letting a private company keep the change from the FTE money allocated to an inner-city school would not mean shortchanging students. (The neighborhood around Reeves is hardly "the inner city," yet some 84 percent of the school's 1078 students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches.) Edison and the district entered into a five-year contract to run the brand-new Reeves Elementary as a partnership, beginning with the 1996-97 school year.

Year one, by nearly all accounts, was a disaster. Despite a massive upfront investment, Edison was slow to deliver home computers to parents and slow to deliver supplies and support to faculty and staff. Teachers clamored to escape the school, with 22 applying for transfers during the school year. Then-principal Dyona McLean also asked for, and eventually received, a transfer. All 61 teachers signed a petition saying they were overworked and underpaid. On the 1997 Stanford Achievement Test, Reeves students scored below students at four nearby elementaries in all three categories of the test (reading comprehension, math applications, and math computation).

Parental involvement was low, and some of those who were involved complained vehemently; then-board member Frederica Wilson, whose District 2 includes Reeves, picked up their complaints and began calling for a radical overhaul at the school. Either the Edison Project had to shape up, Wilson said, or the district would consider voiding the contract after the first year.

What followed was a 50 percent turnover of faculty and staff, and a major investment of time, money, and effort from Edison. Cerf describes year two of the contract at Reeves as "a restart," after which Edison's capital investment reached $1.5 million. John Chubb, an Edison vice president, says Reeves faced problems of "leadership and organization" the first year. The woman Edison picked to lead and reorganize the school was one of the district's finest: Diane Dyes-Paschal, the 1996 principal-of-the-year from Phyllis Wheatley Elementary. Several teachers interviewed for this story emphasize that, despite the mass exodus that marred year one, they were willing to come to Reeves Elementary solely for the opportunity to work with a principal as good as Dyes-Paschal.

If these teachers didn't know they were entering a high-pressure situation, they soon found out. "There was tremendous scrutiny in that second year," says a second-grade teacher who asked not to be identified. "The district conducted three program reviews during the year. [The district review teams] were brutal, but this staff has to be the most talented I've ever seen in Dade County Public Schools. I have never seen a staff work as hard as that group of individuals."

Edison knew it was being closely examined as well, and the company made sure it didn't hurt its chances by cutting corners. "It was great," recalls Madeline Norgan, who joined the Reeves faculty at the beginning of the 1997-98 school year. "Whatever we asked for in terms of supplies, we got it." The promised computers, in the classrooms and in homes, arrived on time and in the correct numbers that year.

By the end of year two, everyone was talking about the turnaround Dyes-Paschal and Edison had wrought at Reeves. The district backed off somewhat from its scrutiny of the project, and school board members stopped clamoring for the premature termination of Edison's contract.

The results of the 1998 Stanford tests were better than the previous year's, but not jarringly so. Reading scores went up from 22 to 26, math application from 27 to 32. The reading score tied two other neighboring elementaries, but was still below the districtwide average. The math applications score was middle-of-the-pack among the five schools in the area; the math computation score, however, remained a dismal 36, the lowest of the five. Still the overall improvement, however marginal, was encouraging. This past week brought more good news on the standardized-test front. The school's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores went up in both the fourth-grade reading test (from 247 in 1998 to 257 in 1999) and the fifth-grade math test (from 258 to 273). Nonetheless these are failing grades. Currently 290 constitutes a passing grade.

There was one blemish on year two, however, over a question of prayer in the school -- not by students, but by teachers. In March 1998, on the day of the Stanford Achievement Tests, teachers and staff entered the school to find that some desks and doorways had been anointed with oil. Some of the marks had been painted in the form of a cross. Several faculty and staff (including Mariefrance Milhomme) acknowledged holding a prayer meeting that Saturday.

Even though the gathering was voluntary, involved no students, and took place outside of regular school hours, several teachers were incensed; many believe a form of Pentecostal/fundamentalist Christianity is the quasi-official religion of the school. Some teachers complained about office workers playing gospel music, and at least one incident of a school employee speaking in tongues.