Text 2 Disruptive students are a headache for public schools.They distract from lessons,skip class,and often bring down the graduation rates.That"s why school districts across the country have resorted to opening altemative schools in recent decades,with hopes that smaller classes and individual attention might help these students get their diplomas.But even these alternative schools（which differ from charter schools in that they are still part of school districts and thus answer to supervisors）can be a burden:They"re expensive to run,and their graduation rates are still pretty low.Desperate for help,many school districts are now hiring private companies to manage these altemative schools and educate their most troublesome students.Large,urban districts like Chicago and Philadelphia have been working with this emerging industry for several years now.Though research shows that problematic students in Philadelphia did better in alternative schools than traditional ones,there is a wide variance in school quality,and detailed information about their curricula is scarce.The question on the table is whether a business whose job it is to make money can better educate vulnerable students than a public system with no profit motive.It"s not too different from the dynamic between the federal government and the private companies running its prisons across the country.But the Justice Department announced last week that it would stop contracting with the private sector,in part because it doesn"t seem to save that much money,and in part because the service didn"t improve either.Richmond is one of the latest cities to experiment with outsourcing education.In July,the city hired a Texas-based company called Camelot Education to run the Richmond Altemative SchooL which last year served 223 students from across the city in grades 6 through 11.Nearly all of the students at Richmond Alternative are black（97 percent）and most are poor（87 percent qualify for free lunches）.Somc black parents once dubbed it the"colored children"s prison"and it has been criticized for contributing to what"s called the school-to-prison pipeline-Virginia is the state that refers the most students to law enforcement.Data provided by Richmond"s school district shows that its altemative school has been floundering for years,When the school year ended three months ago,the numbers were alarming:The dropout rate had jumped to 38 percent,compared t0 28 percent just two years earlier.And students"scores in nearly every subject had fallen by 50 percent or more during that time. Parents of disruptive kids hold the view that alternative school_____