Chris Whittle is the founder and chairman of Edison Schools.

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Similarly, preliminary evaluations of the Edison Project, a private firm which manages 12 local schools, demonstrate that students have made significant academic gains on student achievement tests in three of the four Edison schools that opened in 1995.

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In 1991 Christopher Whittle, a media entrepreneur, and Benno Schmidt, a former president of Yale University, founded the Edison Project, with plans to create a chain of 1, 000 for-profit schools.

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In America, Edison, the market leader, has not made a profit in a decade, despite already running 79 schools.

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The recent legislation in Illinois to ensure schools are equipped with epinephrine began after the 2010 death of Katelyn Carlson, a seventh grader in the Edison Regional Gifted Center in the Albany Park area of Chicago.

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