Brian P. Gill

Reports an evaluation of Edison Schools, the nation's largest for-profit manager of public schools. RAND analyzed Edison's school improvement strategies, the implementation of those strategies, and effects on student achievement. In 2000, Edison Schools, the nation's largest education management organization, asked RAND to analyze its achievement outcomes and design implementation. RAND evaluated Edison's strategies for promoting student achievement in its schools, how it implemented those strategies, how its management affected student achievement, and what factors explained differences in achievement trends among its schools.

Lessons learned from Pittsburgh's bold but troubled Early Childhood Initiative; The Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), an ambitious effort to provide high-quality early care and education services to at-risk children, failed to achieve its goals, although participating children may have derived substantial benefits from it. This report summarizes ECI's organizational history, analyzes and explains its critical weaknesses, and articulates lessons to inform the design and implementation of future large-scale reform initiatives.

Lessons learned from Pittsburgh's bold but troubled Early Childhood Initiative The Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), an ambitious effort launched in Pittsburgh in 1996 to provide high-quality early care and education services to at-risk children, failed to achieve its goals, although participating children may have derived substantial benefits from it. This report summarizes ECI's organizational history, analyzes and explains its critical weaknesses, and articulates lessons to inform the design and implementation of future large-scale reform initiatives. The Early Childhood Initiative (ECI) was an ambitious effort launched in Pittsburgh in 1996 to provide high-quality early care and education services to at-risk children, on a countywide scale and under the direction of local neighborhood agencies. Its goal was to improve the preparation of these children for kindergarten, promote their long-term educational attainment, and give them the early tools to help them become productive, successful members of society. Initially funded by foundations and private donors, ECI planned to become financially sustainable over the long term by persuading the state of Pennsylvania to commit to funding the program at the end of a startup period. Four years after its launch, ECI was far short of its enrollment targets, the cost per child was significantly higher than expected, and the effort to secure a commitment of state funding had failed. ECI was therefore converted to a small-scale demonstration program, leaving a residue of disappointment in many communities around the county. Although findings from a parallel study suggest that participating children may have derived substantial benefits from ECI, it failed to achieve its goals in terms of scale and sustainability. In the aftermath of ECI's scale-down, RAND was commissioned by the Heinz Endowments (ECI's largest funder) to study why ECI fell short of its objectives and to learn from its mistakes. The findings of the study are presented in this report, which summarizes ECI's organizational history, analyzes and explains critical weaknesses that hindered ECI's ability to succeed, and articulates lessons to inform the design and implementation of future large-scale reform initiatives, whether in early care and education or in other areas of social services. (JDL)

This text examines the City University of New York's (CUNY) system of governance. Even in comparison to other universites, this study concludes that CUNY's problems are especially severe and that improvements in educational outcomes are unlikely without basic reforms of governance.