Another Hatchet Job

It was roughly a year and a half ago that the conservative forces within the Democratic Party - the hedge fund/corporate-backed education reformers at EEP, DFER, Education Reform Now, TFA, and their many financial and strategic partners - launched a coordinated attack on Linda Darling-Hammond.

Well, the same edu-idiots now have their sights trained on NY State Senator Bill Perkins, a man with the gall to question the privatizers-slash-charterizers and their myriad of financial and real estate dealings, not to mention their lack of transparency and outright desire to turn a profit (often times at the expense of the very children and communities they serve). Perkins will chair a Thursday hearing about charter schools, and the forces behind charter schools in NY (and the country as a whole) are furious that anyone would DARE question their business practices, no matter how shady, corrupt, or downright insidious they are (I mean, stuff like this is totally acceptable, right?).

Take note: this is NOT a hearing on academic performance. The hearing is under the Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee. Funny how only one of the Perkins-bashing articles cooked up by the folks at the Post and the Times mentioned that important fact, and even then it's buried near the very end. Here's a list of the articles:

The Unions' Plan to Kill Good Schools - Thomas Carroll (President of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability)

The Perkins Puzzle - not sure who wrote this piece, but they repeat many of the same talking points included in a Whitney Tilson e-mail that went out less than 24 hours before it appeared.

Crushing Harlem Hopes - Peter Murphy, Policy Director for the NY Charter Schools Association

Harlem Showdown - Carl Campanile, NY Post writer

Charter-bashing Pol Ripped as Teacher Pet - Carl Campanile, NY Post writer

Perkins has the guts to ask, "Is our democratic version of public education being fulfilled?" That, evidently, will earn you the scorn of the various anti-public school "reformers" looking to privatize education and completely de-regulate the charter school industry.

You can send Bill a thank you note here.