The New York City Board of Education has figured out how to privatize schools without seeming to. Last spring, parents at five troubled public schools voted down the Edison Project, and it appeared that nonpublic managers were not welcome in the school system. That turns out to be untrue. This fall, the system turned over a new school to Bard College, which is now operating Bard High School Early College.
This program gives Bard President Leon Botstein a chance to try out his ideas about what to do with the traditional four years of high school. Botstein has written several articles on the subject, and now the Board of Education has given him his own public school. The four-year program will allow its students to collect a two-year college degree when they graduate, to prove Botstein's belief that eleventh grade students are ready for college studies. Bard College will have considerable control of admissions, staffing, curriculum, and other key decisions.
The Bard program is one of many examples of quiet privatization; it joins the dozens of schools managed by New Visions for Public Education, the Center for Collaborative Education, the Consortium for Public Education, and other nonprofit organizations, which, like Bard have gained unusual control over school curriculum and staffing.
This manner of privatization seems to be far less controversial than the for-profit operation of Edison, or than the creation of charter schools, which continues to limp along at a snail's pace.
"Getting an Early Jump on College," by Karen Arenson, The New York Times, September 6, 2001, (An abstract is free; the full text of the article must be purchased.)
