Ravitch Smears Sanders While Ignoring Clinton's History as Charter Cheerleader

I came across an interview with Diane Ravitch this week that clearly shows her presidential preference, even though she has vowed neutrality in the presidential contest.  During the interview, there was this exchange that puts on display the biases of both questioner and respondent:

DB: Let’s just talk a little more about the other side of the destruction of the public school system, and that’s the so-called privatization, the charter schools. Now it was interesting, and you point this out in your recent writing, that Bernie Sanders, when he was asked about charter schools, said, “Well, I only like the public charter schools.” The point is that it shows his incredible ignorance, and not that I don’t have a great deal of respect for him, but in that context there really aren’t any public charter schools, right? By the very nature of it.

Ravitch: That’s correct, I mean, all charter schools ... the definition of a charter school is that it’s funded by the public. So there is no such thing as a private charter school. So when he says he’s in favor of public charter schools, he’s not really ... he hasn’t been briefed adequately, which I find surprising considering he sits on the Senate committee in charge of education.

While it may be politically-advantageous to pretend otherwise, Bernie voiced opposition to "privately-controlled charter schools," and there are thousands of those across the U. S.   For Ravitch to pretend that Bernie or his staff are entirely out of touch with reality only shows how much she wants to make the case for the candidate embraced by her pals who run AFT and NEA.

I will share what I know of Bernie's position below, but since he has no history to examine with regard to charter school support other than voting against NCLB, let's look at Hillary's positions first, because she does have a 20+ year history.  That history is something Ravitch and her questioner studiously avoid.

One thing is for sure, however: Hillary has been consistently and vociferously in favor of charters.

Hillary's fascination with school privatization began in the early 1990s, when she as First Lady took her entourage to Baltimore to visit one of the for-profit company schools owned by Education Alternatives, Inc.  Here are some details worth recalling about Clinton's involvement during that time:

Phillip Babich: The Federal Government first began experimenting with corporate involvement in schools under the Nixon Administration in the early 1970s. The program, known as Performance Contracting, was abandoned when it proved vulnerable to corruption and fraud. Presidents Reagan and Bush revived the concept, and according to Alex Molinar, author of "Giving Kids the Business," corporations have gained ground in the classroom under the Clinton Administration. Molinar spoke with correspondent Julie Light.

Alex Molinar: Unfortunately the Clinton Administration, in that regard, is indistinguishable from the Reagan and Bush Administrations. It continues the emphasis on contracting out. And in the case of EAI, now Teserec, one of the firms running or attempting to run schools for a profit, Hillary Rodham Clinton made a pilgrimage to Baltimore where that corporation at one time was running nine schools, and sat for a photo opportunity. So there's a lot of bi-partisan, high level political support behind the idea of running schools for profit. So you can see how the deregulatory trajectory of American public policy is encouraging the development of these for-profit, commercializing activities in the schools. That's quite a bit different from whether or not they're actually improving the quality of education that children are receiving. In point of fact, there is very little evidence to suggest that these corporations are going to do anything of much value to America's school children.

In 1998, Hillary gathered a group of charter school supporters to the White House to deliver a speech that made explicit her commitment.  By then, she had clearly come to support charters as models for public schools:

"We’re here because we believe that charter schools can play a significant part in revitalizing and strengthening public schools today – by offering greater flexibility from bureaucratic rules..."

Fast forward to December 2015, a month after Hillary upset Eli Broad and hedge fund managers with her comments about high attrition in charter schools.  As the Wall Street Journal reported in December, there was nothing for the charter industry to worry about, however:

The [Clinton] campaign is working to reassure people that she hasn’t abandoned many years of support for charter schools and other changes to education.

Policy aide Ann O’Leary posted an essay on medium.com assuring that “yes, Hillary Clinton supports charter schools,” as long as they are high quality. Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon added that Mrs. Clinton supports federal funding to expand “high-quality charter schools.”

Her campaign website, too, leaves no doubt about Hillary's doubled-down support for charters as turnaround solutions.  In praise of ESSA, she says,

The bill will allow communities to strike a balance on testing as a measure of student success, require districts and states to take action to turn around struggling schools, and expand resources for teacher development, early childhood education, and high-quality public charter schools.   

Now here is what we know about Bernie's position on charter schools, which has remained consistently oppositional, even though on one occasion, he was less explicit than he might have been.

In January of this year, he said this:

"I'm not in favor of privately-run charter schools," Sanders said to applause at the Jan. 3 event. "If we are going to have a strong democracy and be competitive globally, we need the best educated people in the world. And I believe in public education. I went to public schools my whole life. I think rather than give tax breaks to billionaires, I think we invest in teachers and we invest in public education." 

Then, in March, Sanders said in a radio interview that he "supports public charter schools."

The next day, he clarified at a town hall that he does "not believe in privately-controlled charter schools."  Since there are just a few charters that are not privately-controlled, we can only assume that Sanders does not support the vast majority of charter schools.

If Bernie's position remains less than crystal clear to you, I understand.  If you believe, however, in more of the same corporate education reform scams, more school closures, more corporate welfare charter schools, the choice is very clear.

 

Hillary's Few Good Lies

Hillary Wants More Kids in Charter Schools

Hillary supporters who, at least, are not explicitly hostile to public schools have coughed and groaned for a long time when confronted with evidence the Clintons' unyielding support for Common Core, TFA, standardized tests, continued school resegregation, and corporate reform "no excuses" schools for the poor.  Hillary's full embrace of her husband's new paternalism and "broken windows" social theory applied to schools, along with her lucrative support for the education industry and charter proliferation, have been the impetus for Hillary lovers to harrumph and change the political subject on many occasion.

So it is, then, that many of these supporters have taken Hillary's latest remarks on charter schools as a chance to spin a story that Hillary is hostile to charters and entirely supportive of the publicly controlled schools that are dying out at the same rate that the charter blight spreads across America.   Sorry, spinners.

If we look at what Hillary said, however, during her Roland Martin interview in South Carolina last week, it is easy to see a politician with a mastery of having-it-both-ways obfuscating rhetoric that underscores her unwillingness to stand up for any principle that is likely to alienate any potential donor to her campaign.  Here is part of what she said when asked if she supports the expansion of charter schools and vouchers:

CLINTON: I have for many years now, about 30 years, supported the idea of charter schools, but not as a substitute for the public schools, but as a supplement for the public schools. And what I have worked on through my work with the Children’s Defense Fund and my work on education in Arkansas and through my time as first lady and senator  is to continue to say charter schools can have a purpose, but you know there are good charter schools and there are bad charter schools, just like there are good public schools and bad public schools.

MARTIN: So let’s get rid of all the bad….

CLINTON: But the original idea, Roland, behind charter schools was to learn what worked and then apply them in the public schools. And here’s a couple of problems. Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.

So I want parents to be able to exercise choice within the public school system — not outside of it — but within it because I am still a firm believer that the public school system is one of the real pillars of our democracy and it is a path for opportunity.

So all the 6,000+ public schools that have been shuttered and replaced by corporate charter schools is not the "idea of charter schools" that Hillary supports?  Clinton appears to hav this parallel universe conception of charter schools, where they only function to "supplement for the public schools." And where public resources are not lost to charter schools, as they are today and will be tomorrow.

And does Hillary really want to apply what works in charter schools and apply it to public schools?  If that happened, and the charters' bare-knuckled penal test prep became as concentrated in public schools as it is in charters, what would be the purpose of choice? 

And does Hillary really want charters to take all children, rather than just the students who are likely to burnish the charter brands?  If charters took all kids, there would be no public schools left, and in the corporate charter plan for educating the poor, the public schools have a necessary role to play as schools of last resort for children that the corporate charters don't want--the ones on Little Eva's "got to go" lists.

So even if Hillary were serious about what she told Roland Martin, it would be entirely unworkable in any world except the one she inhabits with her wishful-thinking soccer parents, her cynical Wall Street bundlers, and the non-profit "free market" fans of the Ravitch crew.

The Year's Most Inaccurate Headline

By suggesting that Hillary Clinton has done anything to impede the demise of public education or the de-professionalization of teaching, the Inaccurate Headline Award goes to Huffington Post:

Hillary Clinton Earns Backing Of Nation's Largest Union

Will NEA Follow Weingarten's Autocratic Hillary Endorsement?

Source here:

...Last summer, the NEA invited all presidential candidates to participate in the union’s endorsement process. Only Clinton, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders did so. Each made a video statement that was shown at the summer’s RA meeting and posted by many to their local groups. Though more candidates have entered the race since then, none have chosen to interview with the NEA. 

Ironically, at the same RA meeting, the assembly voted specifically NOT to ignore rank and file membership before endorsing a Presidential candidate. New Business Item 79 states: 

NEA, as an organization, will actively engage in conversation and outreach on the NEA endorsement process with all 2016 Presidential campaigns prior to the consideration of a primary recommendation. 

It seems if the leadership goes through with the primary endorsement as outlined above, they may be violating NBI 79. 

The move is doubly troubling because of the strong-armed manner in which the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) endorsed Clinton in July. 

Though the AFT Executive Board voted to endorse Clinton, there is little evidence it did so after adequately gauging members opinions through claimed multiple surveys and telephone town halls. The move caused an uproar and claims the AFT endorsed too early and without rank and file support....

Eli Broad and the Clintons

By Ken Derstine at Defend Public Education!

June 28, 2015
Last link update: July 17, 2015

The Broads and the Clintons at the pre-ball dinner hosted by Eli Broad at the Inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009. Click here to view more pictures from the event.

For some people, sleep seems incidental. If you’re one of them, I envy you. Bill Clinton, who I have known since he was governor of Arkansas, sticks out in my mind as someone who does exceptionally well with very little rest.

While he was president, he invited me to stay at the White House. It had been a long day and I was tired, so I went to bed a bit early. At 11:30 PM, I woke up to a knock on the door. The president’s usher poked his head in and informed me the president was in the solarium and wanted to chat. There wasn’t much I could say except, “Sure.”

President Clinton came in, sat down, and began talking about everything–the Russian election, the Taiwan Strait, Israel, and why Kentucky was the best of the Final Four in that spring’s college basketball playoffs. We ended up going to bed not long before dawn.

            From The Art of Being Unreasonable by Eli Broad
            John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2012   p. 40, 41

During his presidency, Bill Clinton started the controversial practice of inviting political supporters to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. Nearly 1000 White House guests gave more than $10 million in the 1990’s towards his reelection campaign and later to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential bid. One of the contributors was Eli Broad who gave more than $162,500. From January 1, 1995 to December 31, 1996 Broad gave $100,000 and listed his corporate affiliation as Truman Arnold Companies. Truman Arnold Companies is a $2.2 billion Texarkana, Texas petroleum marketing company. Clinton’s assistant District attorney, Webster Hubbell, who was convicted on corruption charges in 1994, was on the payroll of Truman Arnold and Sun America, Inc., “a California financial services company controlled by Eli Broad, a close Clinton friend who, like Rapoport and Arnold, stayed overnight at the White House.”

Eli Broad started accumulating his riches from a real estate company that he began with his wife’s cousin on borrowed money in 1957. Riding the crest of the expanding real estate market after World War II, particularly with the growth of suburbs around urban areas, Broad began building his millions, later to be billions, when he acquired Sun Life Insurance Company of America in 1971. In 1999, he sold SunAmerica to the American International Group (AIG) for $18 billion. For those who see accumulating wealth as the measure of a man, Broad became an icon fulfilling the American Dream’s Horatio Alger myth of the self-made man becoming incomprehensibly rich.

Fortunately for Eli Broad, his myth could remain intact during the real estate and financial market crashes in 2008 because his affiliation with his real estate business and financial company was years in his past. He stepped down as CEO of Kaufman & Broad in 1974 and CEO of SunAmerica in 2000. AIG was given $182 billion in taxpayer funds in 2008 to prevent the company, and the financial system, from collapsing during the financial market collapse brought on by the real estate market collapse.

In 2000, Broad and his wife Edythe created the “philanthropy” The Broad Foundations. The “philanthropy” became a means for the Broads to bring their Horatio Alger myth to the arts and to education, having no background in either, and, along with other major “philanthropists” like the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation, he begin the reshaping of public education in the United States to fit a neoliberal agenda in the interests of the financial oligarchy the 1% is trying to form in the United States.

Bill Clinton’s all night White House meeting with Eli Broad, occurred as Clinton, under the guise of a progressive agenda, was advancing a neoliberal agenda during and after his presidency. Though he claims many of the reactionary laws during his Presidency were due to Republican intransigence, the Democrats controlled both legislative bodies during Clinton’s first term when most of these reactionary laws were passed. He continued with the policies of the Reagan years that were a counter-reform undermining the gains of Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60’s. Corporate and financial interests had given these concessions because of fears that labor unrest in the 30’s and urban unrest in the 60’s would lead to a political movement that threatened the interests of the 1%. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 benefited Clinton’s many White House guests and others in the 1% and have led to historic levels of wealth for the 1% even as it has impoverished the 99%. Clinton’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 led to an expansion of Reagan’s “War on Drugs” which creation a prison population that is the largest per capita in the world and an expansion of the death penalty for the low-income population. His Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, known as “welfare reform”, was to lead to an explosion of homelessness and low-income or no-income families falling into a poverty not seen since the Great Depression. The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up corporations to low-wage workers in the developing world and gutted manufacturing in the United States. It is under these conditions that Eli Broad launched his “philanthropies”, including the Broad Superintendents Academy in 2000, to train and insert superintendents in school districts all around the United States who would advance a privatization of public schools agenda. Based on the right-wing economic theories of economist Milton Friedman corporate education reform began a fascistic agenda designed to reshape public schools financially and ideologically for the one percent.

Playing a central role in promoting Clinton’s neoliberal agenda was the Democratic Leadership Council. Formed in 1985 after the defeat of Walter Mondale and the reelection of Ronald Reagan, it became the think tank for many of the rightwing neoliberal policies promoted by Clinton. Clinton was head of the DLC in 1990 until he became President in 1992. A key player shepherding the neoliberal agenda during the Clinton Presidency and after was Bruce Reed who became head of the Democratic Leadership Council in 2001.

On March 22^nd, 2010, a New York Times article described his history.

“Mr. Reed was policy director when Mr. Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, was chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. Mr. Reed also served as deputy chairman of policy for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, then worked in the White House for all of the Clinton administration.

As head of the Domestic Policy Council, he had a leading role in overhauling welfare in 1996 and in developing initiatives on education, crime, health, tobacco and more. In 2006, back at the Democratic Leadership Council, Mr. Reed and Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff but then a congressman and Mr. Reed’s friend from their years in the Clinton administration, wrote a book called “The Plan: Big Ideas for America.” It was intended as a platform for the Democrats’ takeover of Congress that year.”

Files in the National Archives show that Reed was heavily involved in developing the Clinton neoliberal education agenda. Files from 1997 – 2000 in 133 folders in 9 boxes “includes material pertaining to national standards and testing; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the 1999 efforts to reauthorize the act; 100,000 teachers and class size; charter schools and vouchers; education events and forums; social promotion; Goals 2000; Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) Scholarships; Pell Grants; the Education Flexibility Partnership Act of 1999 (Ed-flex); education funding and budgets; and various school and teacher issues.”

In the final months of the Clinton administration, another controversy erupted over favoritism for wealthy supporters of the Clinton’s neoliberal agenda. Hillary Clinton played an active role in efforts to give tax breaks to private foundations and wealthy charity donors at the same time as donations were being solicited for Bill Clinton’s presidential library. Bruce Reed, who was Clinton’s chief domestic policy advisor at the time, dismissed the controversy saying, Clinton "wanted to give a break to working people for putting a few more dollars in the plate at the church. Not for any other far-fetched reason." Months before proposing the tax breaks, Clinton White House officials had proposed holding a September, 1999 conference to celebrate “philanthropy heroes” who had donated large gifts. The list included “Microsoft's Bill Gates and his wife, Dell computer founder Michael Dell and investors George Soros and Eli Broad”.

In July of 2005 Hillary Clinton was appointed by the Democratic Leadership Council to define the party’s agenda for the upcoming 2006 and 2008 elections. Reed assured an interviewer on NPR that she was on board with the neoliberal agenda but her appointment had nothing to do with a political run for President in 2008.

Despite his endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 election, Eli Broad was thrilled with the election of Barack Obama. The 2009/2010 Annual Report of the Broad Foundation (page 5) says,

“The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. secretary of education, marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned.

With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.”

Arne Duncan had been on the board of the Broad Foundation until he became Secretary of Education (2009/2010 Broad Report page 25) and, according to this Report brought five Broad Residents and alumni with him to the Department of Education. Also on the board (2009/2010 Broad Report page 25)   the Broad Foundation is Larry Summers who served as top economic advisor in the Clinton and Obama administrations after being Chief Economist for the World Bank from 1991–1993. At this time the World Bank was in the midst of playing a leading role in developing a neoliberal education agenda in Chile that began under the Pinochet dictatorship. Among the many former officials in the Clinton administration joining Obama’s administration was Bruce Reed who became Vice President Biden’s chief of staff. On March 22, 2010 he also was appointed executive director of President Obama’s bipartisan commission to reduce the national debt.

On November 13,^, 2013, Bruce Reed left as Biden’s chief of staff to become the first President of The Broad Foundation. The website Inside Philanthropy said this appointment made him “one of the powerful people in education philanthropy.” In an interview in the Los Angeles Times on March 13, 2014, about his agenda with the Broad Foundation, Reed gave the standard boilerplate of corporate education reform. This is someone who has never taught a day in his life at any grade level nor had any background in pedagogy or education.

After announcing her run for President on April 12, 2015, Hillary Clinton met with the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association in June. She sought to distance herself from her support of No Child Left Behind when she was a Senator in 2001. While she was an early critic of standardized testing, her position seems to shift by which way the political winds are blowing. Given her history with the Broad Foundation, can there be any illusions that she will continue the neoliberal attack on public education? It has been reported that 181 Clinton Foundation donors lobbied the State Department when she was Secretary of State. The two top donors were leaders in corporate education reform: The Microsoft/Gates Foundation ($26,000,000) and the Walmart/Walton Family Foundation ($10,500,00).

Nor can the union leaders be trusted to represent the interests of their members. Randi Weingarten in particular has a history with the Broad Foundation going back to 2002. This collaboration has continued ever since.

In the 2009/2010 Annual Report (Page 10), the Broad Foundation said,

“Teacher unions have always been a formidable voice in public education. We decided at the onset of our work to invest in smart, progressive labor leaders like Randi Weingarten, head of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City for more than a decade and now president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). We partnered with Weingarten to fund two union-run charter schools in Brooklyn and to fund New York City’s first incentive-based compensation program for schools, as well as the AFT’s Innovation Fund. We had previously helped advance pay for performance programs in Denver and Houston, but we were particularly encouraged to see New York City embrace the plan.” 

In 2010 she collaborated with the Gates Foundation to develop a teacher evaluation system based on standardized tests, testifying before Congress three times in support of the effort. A recent study noted the increasing convergence of the goals of Bill Gates and Eli Broad. Randi Weingarten has been collaborating with both. For several years, she has been a leader in the Clinton Global Initiative conferences that bring together corporate and union leaders to foster collaboration in promoting a neoliberal agenda nationally and internationally.

Unless the 99% gets its act together and launches a serious political challenge to the two-party system with a party with a program that represents the interests of the 99%, the November 2016 election will once again be a choice between the lesser of two evils. The problem is the evil just keeps getting worse.

Also see:

AFT Endorses Hillary
Diane Ravitch's Blog - July 11, 2015
Read the comments.

Bill Clinton Is Sorry For A Lot of Things
Huffington Post - July 17, 2015

Why Bill Clinton's Apology and Barack Obama's Prison Drive-By, Token Clemencies Are Cynical Election Year Posturing
Black Agenda Report - July 17, 2015

Ignored, Uninformed and for the GOP, Crazy for Charters: Presidential Candidates Get an F Grade on K-12 Public Education
Alternet - March 24, 2016

Curmudgucation Reads Verdict on Hillary, But Co-Defendants Ignored

In coming to the evidentiary edge of connecting the dots among the DNC, DFER, Gates/Broad, and NEA/AFT, Curmuducation is pressing the envelope on preserving his elevated status in Diane Ravitch's Blogger Hall of Fame.  But he is not there yet, having stopped just short of a guilty verdict for Weingarten and Garcia for co-conspiring to allow the destruction of public schools and the teaching profession. 

Rather, it is Hillary whose verdict Peter Greene is here to deliver:

I would say that the jury is still out on Hillary, but honestly, I'd be lying. Hillary is pretty clearly tied to the same charter-loving, reform-pushing, corporate-driven, test-and-punishing reformsters as our last two Presidents. CAP, one of the fiercest reformster-driven advocacy groups in DC, was simply a holding pen for Clinton campaign leaders like John Podesta; they are close to Hillary and they have never, ever, been a friend to public education or public school teachers. DFER, a group that absolutely loathes teachers and the teachers union, is delighted that Hillary is running.

Meanwhile, Anthony Cody has been put in charge of pretending that there is some conversion process underway that will bring the wayward Weingarten and Garcia into the Ravitch fold.  The idiocy of such a notion is too ridiculous for comment.

Cody, in fact, needs time and resources to get his next big NPE talkathon in Orlando arranged, and he can't do it without the laundered Gates money that NEA and AFT have for him.

How teachers can continue to support this political pyramid scheme is truly baffling.

Hillary Loves the Common Core, and the "Iowa Core"

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On Tuesday Hillary’s first small sit down in Iowa, which was choreographed for the CSPAN audience, took up the subject of education.  Almost 50 minutes in, one of the particiants, Diane, receives her prompt from Hillary to ask the Common Core question at 49:48.  Check out Hill’s response, which runs until 54:00.

Her comments underscore the possibility that Hillary knows almost nothing about tests or testing policy.  In fact, in the part of Hillary’s response that begins at  50:01, she expresses her belief that the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, which has been given since 1935 in many states as a rough basis of comparison across districts and states, is, in fact, a state test based on something Hillary calls the “Iowa core.”  This kind of ignorance would be embarrassing for mom in Des Moines supermarket, but for the leading presidential contender with pre-approved questions, this is shocking.

I think part of the reason that Iowa may be more understanding of this [the need for Common Core] is that you have had the Iowa core for years.  You had a system, plus the Iowa assessment test, I think I am right in saying I took those when I was in elementary school, right? You know, the Iowa test.

Iowa has had a testing system based on a core curriculum for a really long time, and you see the value of it, and you understand why that helps you organize your whole education system.  And a lot of states, unfortunately, haven’t had that and so don’t understand the value of, you know, a core, in the sense, a common core that the, of course, you can then, figure out the best way in your community to try to reach—but your question is really a larger one: how do we end up at a point, where we are so, ah, negative about the most non-family enterprise in the raising of the next generation—how our kids are educated.  And there are a lot of explanations for that, I suppose, but whatever they are, we need to try to get back into a, ah, broad conversation where people will actually listen to each other again and try to come up with solutions to problems . . .

The Weekend to Make Charters Good

After Weingarten and Ravitch came out for the mindless charter improvement plan as a way to clear the path for Hillary's (DFER) education policy announcements, then came EduShyster with a sweet interview with Philly's KIPP CEO, followed shortly thereafter with a vexing post by Peter Greene about what KIPP schools just might believe?!  Stay tuned, Peter--my book will let former teachers tell what KIPP believes.

Then tonight was this Ravitch ad without comment on the upcoming meeting on charter school investing (all "non-profit") with some of the whales of CorpEd philanthropy.  

The only thing I can figure is that one of Hillary's private emails must have included invitations to a top tier inauguration party in early 2017.

If you are in Midtown on the 10th, maybe you can drop in and throw a rotten egg for me.

Otherwise, bring me a signed napkin by Whitney Tilson, and I don't care if it has lipstick on it.  The agenda below (click to enlarge):