In Baltimore, MD, alot of city schools were taken over by a private corporation under the city's thankful direction of Mayor O'Malley. After some difficulty, they are very much pulling ahead of the regular schools, even though normal kids are going through them w/o a voucher or anything.

Why is that? Well, Mayor O'Malley is an accountant by trade (as is his DC counterpart, who really pulled the city out of a slump while wearing a bow tie). No pure politician can run a city now -- it has to be done by the numbers.