When Mayor Bill de Blasio was being hammered by $5 million of emotional attack ads accusing him of “evicting” 194children from one of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy schools in Harlem, the Mayor called Paul Tudor Jones to plead for a truce.
Paul Tudor Jones is a billionaire hedge fund manager who is heavily invested in privately-managed charter schools. He manages $13 billion in his business. Being so very rich and successful, he decided to fix poverty. He created the RobinHood Foundation to raise money from his rich buddies, and it has done some good work. It raises $80 million in a single night at its nnual dinner.
Jones now has a big goal. He wants to save public education.
Never having been a teacher nor a public school parent (not clear if he ever attended a public school), he nonetheless feels fully qualified to redesign American education based on the same principles he learned as a successful hedge fund manager.
The money of Jones and his friends is now used to destroy a basic democratic institution, which they don’t like. Their money supports schools that cherry-pick students who are winners, just as they manage their investments. The idea of equal opportunity has no role in his world.
That may be why the negative TV commercials about de Blasio never explained that no students were being evicted from charter schools; they wanted more space to grow a middle school in PS 149 in Harlem, which meant the actual eviction of students with severe disabilities.
But in the world of Paul Tudor Jones, students with disabilities don’t count. They are not winners. They must be evicted to make more room for kids with high scores.
Aren’t we lucky to have Paul Tudor Jones to redesign American education? To tell us how to train teachers?
The propaganda that schools need to be saved and charters are the answer, is an inexcusable lapse for objective journalism. Forbes, on occasion, has strayed from its bias to be a professional journalistic endeavor. It takes a step back and loses credibility and interested readers, when it disseminates the hackneyed, grandiose and superficial information that ALEC packages.
Wow, talk about cherry picking a few comments from a very extensive interview. Perhaps everyone should read the entire piece. Please note there are not any quotation marks around any of this piece.
If I am not mistaken, nothing is quoted and there is a link to the article provided. No quotation marks are required.
Sorry this off topic, but I am hoping that during the current Civil Rights conference, education will be a real discussiion. Segregation is being enhanced in today’s educational setting instead of helping to end it. According to TV, President Obama will discuss education during this conference. It will be interesting to see what he says and to see if our civil rights leaders get what is happening in education.
Come on now, Diane: No Oligarch Left Behind, and all that.
More on Robin Hood: Emma Bloomberg , daughter of Michael, used to be a top official, and now Mark Bezos, brother of billionaire Jeff Bezos is now their Senior Vice President for Marketing, Communications, & Events
https://www.robinhood.org/about/staff
They are a big fan of Eva Moskowitz who is a beneficiary of their funding, both directly and through the $5M ad campaign that Tudor helped fund attacking de Blasio for standing up (even briefly) against her unlimited charter expansion in a Harlem public school which would put the school up to 130% and/or kick out special needs kids.
As a result of Tudor helping to fund this $5M campaign, de Blasio said uncle by inviting Robin Hood’s education director Emary Aronson to join their “space planning” taskforce.
http://nypost.com/2014/03/27/de-blasio-puts-charter-school-leaders-on-co-location-panel/