Roy mckinney, principal of Philadelphia's Barratt Middle School, pushes his teachers to look past their crumbling inner-city building, ripped textbooks and nearly empty art rooms. He tells them to work whatever magic they can-class by class, student by student. But this spring, when Edison Schools signed on to run Barratt and 19 other low-performing schools, McKinney thought he might finally have resources to make a difference in the lives of his 800 students. Over the summer, Edison, the nation's largest for-profit school manager, filled Barratt with hope in the form of new books, computers, tennis racquets, lab goggles, art supplies and even tambourines and drums to replace the single broken keyboard in the music room.
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