This is what you must read to understand how the richest and most powerful charter advocacy group imploded. It pretended to be the voice of powerless black and Hispanic families. It was the Waltons, the Broads, and assorted financiers. The ostensible cause for its demise was the licentious behavior of its founder and CEO, who apparently had multiple hookups with staff members and then made lewd comments to a non-staff member at the education reform Philos meeting. That was the end for him, and the organization collapsed too.

  1. Chalkbeat reports. Key in this account is that other charter leaders were disgusted by Eva’s hardball tactics. It worked for her but embarrassed the others. What the Chalkbeat story leaves out is the importance of the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that the financiers were giving to Cuomo’s re-election campaign. So, organizing the kids, their parents and teachers by the thousands, hiring buses, staging a march, and waging a political campaign using the children as props was a speciality of FES. No real public school could do that; it would be illegal. But the money to Cuomo was even more persuasive in building the appearance of a “movement.”
  2. Mercedes Schneider reports, A deep dive into data. Her specialty.