But first, the story of the white hat. In 1986, Brennan bought a steel mill in Alabama that was going broke. "They didn't like these Yankee carpetbaggers because we had to cut back the workforce," he explained in an interview for the PBS series "Frontline," airing on May 23. "A television reporter there asked me, 'What does it feel like coming to this town on your great big black horse wearing a black hat and laying all these people off?'" he recalls. "Well, I said, you got that wrong. I'm on a white horse wearing a white hat, and I'm saving 1,500 jobs."

A week later, Brennan received a letter from a local businessman thanking him for taking over the failing company along with a gift of a 10-gallon white hat. "That became my metaphor," Brennan said, and he wears the hat often.

Brennan's White Hat Management, a for-profit "educational maintenance organization," manages charter schools -- independent schools that are publicly funded, but privately managed, and freed of many of the bureaucratic restrictions on public schools. Vouchers and charter schools, until now somewhat esoteric concepts, are taking center stage in this year's presidential campaign, as George Bush and Al Gore vie to become the "education president." There are now about 1,700 charter schools in the country, attended by an estimated 350,000 students, and in his January State of the Union address, President Clinton called for 3,000 charter schools by next year.

If David Brennan has his way, there will be many more. The Ohio entrepreneur traces his concern about education back to that same Alabama steel mill, where he was shocked to learn that many employees -- in that factory and others he acquired -- were virtually illiterate. So he set up on-site computer learning centers to improve workers' skills and productivity. His concern for learning, triggered by this experience, stayed with him and, after he retired from business several years ago, he turned his prodigious energies to education.

Motivated by his conservative belief in the power of the market and a deep distrust of government, Brennan began using his political connections to press for alternatives to public schools. Since then, he has become a major force in the growing movement to privatize American education. Largely because of Brennan's relentless pressure, Ohio is now a stronghold of school choice.

Appointed by then-Gov. George Voinovich to head up a commission on school choice in 1992, Brennan advocated for a publicly funded voucher program in Cleveland, one of only three such programs in the United States. The wealthy, conservative Brennan teamed up with Fannie Lewis, a black Democratic city councilwoman from a very poor neighborhood that was desperate over the school system's virtual meltdown. Lewis organized rallies and, on one occasion, a caravan of seven busloads of inner-city residents to the state capital to lobby for a city voucher program. (Vouchers are awarded to low-income parents who apply. The families use them to pay for tuition in a private school.)

Once the law was passed, Brennan plunged in himself. He opened two private schools named Hope Academies for students using vouchers. But they did not last long. "The funding of the vouchers is only $2,250 per child," he explains. "We were unable to pay sufficiently high salaries to keep our teachers. We didn't have the attraction of being a religious school." So he closed the voucher schools after three years, then opened charter schools. Charter school funding is considerably more generous: about $5,000 per student.

Now Brennan runs more charter schools than anyone else in Ohio, through White Hat. According to the Ohio Department of Education, it now manages six elementary schools and five high schools in four cities around the state. His company now takes in an estimated $10 million annually in government funding. The high schools, called Life Skills Centers, enroll students who have dropped out or are labeled "at risk." More are on the way.

Brennan brings to this fast-growing enterprise a curious mix of near-religious fervor and devotion to the profit motive. Speaking earnestly of the Life Skills students whom he wants to rescue from their lives on the street, he says, "There are huge voids in dealing with this population, and we're trying to help these persons become solid citizens. I am convinced that a very substantial percentage of our students here will make it." But he also intends to make money at this mission, saying, "Education is first, last and always a business. If it's run like a business it can be done profitably."

The very idea of making a profit from public education troubles many people, including Cleveland Teachers Union President Richard DeColibus. "When it comes down to decisions of what's more important, the child's education or making a bigger profit, profit is always going to win," he says. DeColibus criticizes what he calls Brennan's "Kmart" approach to charter schools.

Politics 2000: Unflinching daily political news, analysis and commentary.