Alan Singer gets credit for one of the most creative headlines of the year. He calls his article “The Dishonorable Andrew Cuomo Meets the Hedge Fund / Charter School Zombies.”

Governor Cuomo has indeed dishonored his office by selling out the public schools, which enroll the vast majority of children in New York State, and paying court to his campaign contributors who love charter schools, which enroll 3% of the children.

Singer refers to the Camp Philos meeting in the Adirondacks, where Governor Cuomo will host a group of other cheerleaders for privatized charter schools.

The meeting is sponsored by a hedge-fund back group called “Education Reform Now.” What they mean by “education reform” is hand over your community public school NOW to a corporation that will pay outrageous executive salaries and will keep out the students with the highest needs and boast about its test scores.

Who will join Governor Cuomo to promote the strangulation of public education?

As Singer writes:

According to the online agenda, break-out sessions include discussions on “The Next Big Thing: Groundbreaking Approaches to Teacher Preparation,” “Up, Down, and Sideways: Building an Effective School Reform Coalition,” ” Tight-Loose Options for Ensuring All Kids Have Access to a Great Education,” and “Collaborative Models for Changing State and Local Teacher Policies.” But really only one topic will be discussed – How to promote and profit from the privatization of public education in the United States.

Education Reform Now (ERN) is a non-profit advocacy group that lobbies state and federal public officials to support charter schools and tougher teacher evaluations and tenure requirements. In Washington state it supported a successful effort to lift the state ban on charter schools. While ERN claims to be left-leaning, in New Jersey it has been allied with Governor Chris Christie in efforts to weaken the teachers union, increase the number of years before teachers are eligible for tenure, and to evaluate teacher based on student performance on high-stakes standardized assessments.

It is no surprise that Cuomo, who has presidential ambitions, is lending his name to the retreat. Education Reform Now has donated $65,000 to Cuomo’s campaign chest since 2010 through a series of political action committee. Members of the ERN Board of Directors and founders of its “unofficially” affiliated political action committee, Democrats for Education Reform, also give individual contributions to Cuomo. They include John Petry, a board member for ERN, co-founder of DFER, founder and manager of Sessa Capital, and co-chair of New York City’s Success Academy Charter Schools. Other ERN/DFER deep pocket hedge fund operators who help bankroll Cuomo are Joel Greenblatt, founder of Gotham Capital and co-chair of the Success Academy network and Whitney Tilson, founder and managing partner of Kase Capital Management. A DFER representative described the retreat as an “opportunity for elected officials, advocacy leaders, and philanthropists to come together to discuss policy and political ideas to reform education.”

The board of directors of Education Reform Now reads like a list of the royalty of the hedge fund world, Singer writes. Quite a coup for a man with Presidential ambitions to gather so many of the super-rich in one location.

No wonder people refer to Andrew Cuomo as “Governor 1%.” He knows where his priorities lie. No, it is not with the children.