None of this fazes Christopher Whittle, Edison’s CEO and founder. He blames the plummeting stock price on the “disappointment” in Philadelphia–winning 20 rather than 45 schools. “We’re going to have to rebuild that confidence,” he says. “But it is not a company-shaking event.” He boasts that Edison recently won $40 million in new funding and will educate 84,000 students this year. And Whittle predicts Edison will show its first net profit in 2003.
Other believers in for-profit education are trying new models. Chester E. Finn, president of the Fordham Foundation and a former Edison founding partner, says the future may lie in hybrids, like New Schools Venture Fund, a venture philanthropy that backs for-profit and nonprofit entrepreneurs who start innovative schools. “I think we’ll see a lot of experimenting,” he says. Families have to hope that a few of those experiments will succeed.
