Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993 TAG: 9301120375
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
LIGHTS DIMMING FOR EDISON PROJECT?
TENNESSEE businessman Chris Whittle, of Channel One fame, wants to start a chain of schools to (a) show America how to improve the education of its young, and (b) turn a profit.Few would doubt the value of improving America's schools, and any genuine assistance toward that goal ought to be welcomed. Any legitimate activity that turns a profit also should be welcome. The question is: Can better schools and profit-making coexist as envisioned by Whittle and his Edison Project?
Critics typically have worried that the project might fare too well - that it would rob the public schools of vital middle-class support and so leave them to cope, underfunded, with students that, for lack of money or other reasons, nobody else wants.
But problem No. 1 with Whittle's idea, according to an article in the Jan. 18 issue of The New Republic, is that it may not work as a business.
Whittle has said he can establish and run good schools, at a profit, without such taxpayer subsidies as tuition vouchers. But without public subsidy of some sort, writes skeptic Sara Mosle, financial projections suggest the Edison Project won't fly.
When Whittle made a big deal seven months ago of recruiting Benno Schmidt away from the presidency of Yale University, President Bush was still thought a good bet for re-election. Bush - and his education secretary, former Tennesse Gov. Lamar Alexander - are advocates of tax-funded tuition vouchers for private schools. President-elect Clinton is not.
Without them, argues Mosle, Whittle must either cut the amount spent on actual education so low or increase tuition so high, or both, that there'll be little market for his product. He must do that simply to meet interest and capital expenses.
Forget competition from tax-supported public schools, Mosle says. Consider competition from established private and parochial schools. As nonprofit institutions free of the need to return a portion of their revenues to investors, and often the beneficiaries of gifts and endowment income, they provide a high-quality alternative to public education at less cost than Project Edison possibly could.
Ultimately, of course, the judges of whether the project should continue to go forward will have to be Whittle and his investors. And if they decide it should, the test of their faith won't be Mosle's analysis; it will be the marketplace. That is for the best.
But if Mosle is correct, perhaps the biggest lesson taught America by Whittle's experiment will be this: The economic payback from good schools isn't immediate, and doesn't flow directly to the providers of education. The payback is long-term, and goes to society.