Who has voiced the strongest opposition to Edison?
An assortment of unions, most in major cities, has fiercely opposed the company. The opposition is less vocal in small cities and rural areas where Edison operates. Most union opposition is based on fears that teachers and other school employees will lose jobs. There’s some justification for the concerns: When Edison takes over a school, it prefers to hire a new staff, leaving districts to reassign employees to other schools. “On a teaching front, Edison has assumed correctly that it needs to staff its schools itself,” says Thomas Toch. “An immense amount of research suggests that a central ingredient of a successful school is one where all the people in the school are there by choice and have bought into the school’s mission.” Edison’s toughest battle to date was in Philadelphia, where unions joined forces with local politicians to battle the company. The mayor and the city council were furious over the state’s initial plan to give Edison control of Philadelphia’s school administratio
