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"  As far as tragically perverted euphemisms go, &amp;quot;ed reform&amp;quot; makes &amp;quot;corporate personhood&amp;quot; look like an insignificant white (collar) lie.  In Florida, Vice President Joe Biden&amp;#039;s ed reformer brother Frank  is known to throw the family name around while selling for a company that builds charter schools called Mavericks in Education. Since 2007, Mavericks has received nearly $750,000 in federal grants, and continues to bank taxpayer money  despite findings that administrators overbilled the state and padded enrollment.  In Michigan and Colorado, a Bain Capital property called Bright Horizons \u2013 already one of the country&amp;#039;s largest daycare providers and a major slut for public subsidies \u2013 is operating 11 elementary schools and eyeing more locations. According to a New York Times article called  &amp;quot;How Bright Horizons Took Care of Bain Capital Over the Years,&amp;quot; the firm&amp;#039;s stake in the expanding ed goliath is &amp;quot;about $1.4 billion, more than two times its original investment.&amp;quot;  Perhaps most egregiously, New Orleans has four charters that advertise their corporate sponsor right in the school name. They&amp;#039;re not doing so well. Of four Capital One-New Beginnings labs, two hemorrhaged half of their staffs last year, while only one retained its principal through spring semester.  Such trends continue despite clear and present failures by these and other so-called ed reform initiatives, which are generally shepherded to light by young and naive narcissists who summer with the hedge fund managers who bankroll their ghetto adventures. Even in true blue Massachusetts, where Horace Mann pioneered public pedagogical principles that notably exclude loopholes for profiteering, corporations are edging toward a hostile takeover. Their holy grails are for principals and school boards to win supreme power over teacher terminations and to spank unions into oblivion.  With Boston engulfed in its first mayoral race in two decades -- an intensifying 12-way orgy worth a documentary or two -- this week the Bain Capital and Walmart-affiliated nonprofit Stand For Children (SFC) announced plans to spend $500,000 cheerleading for popular City Councilor-At-Large John Connolly. As I wrote yesterday in my regular column on the race:  This day was bound to come. SFC already ruffled feathers by scheduling a forum on the future of BPS without inviting anybody from the school district, and ... in June, the group also hosted a mayoral summit at the Edward Brooke Charter School in Roslindale. Before that, SFC spent the first half of last year pushing a commonwealth-wide ballot initiative dubbed &amp;quot;Great Teachers, Great Schools&amp;quot;; after building support through an effective and deceptive ad campaign and spending more than $300,000 to collect signatures, the nonprofit,  to use the phrasing of its CEO, cornered teachers and jammed anti-union legislation &amp;quot;down their throats.&amp;quot;  The money pledged by SFC is as much in outside dough as Connolly has spent from his own war chest thus far, and probably enough to help the councilor secure the top polling spot. But after a bitter torrent of Twitter blowback over SFC&amp;#039;s private equity pedigree \u2013 compounded by haranguing from other leading candidates to sign a pledge denouncing outside cash \u2013 Connolly held a press conference today to openly reject the offer. Turning SFC away like the geek in high school movies who picks his loyal old friends over the rich prick with a sports car, the councilor said he didn&amp;#039;t ask for the bundle, and that he doesn&amp;#039;t want it. &amp;quot;If they truly believe in my candidacy,&amp;quot; he told reporters, &amp;quot;they will respect my wishes.&amp;quot; A press release followed: I received a call Monday evening from a representative from Stand informing me of the endorsement. I thanked him, and he wished me luck. That was the extent of our conversation. The first I learned of a $500,000 independent expenditure was when I read about it in the newspaper. Stand&amp;#039;s comments yesterday created the impression that I accepted a $500,000 contribution to my campaign. I did not request any contribution, I do not want any contribution, and I have not accepted any contribution. I did not ask for any money from outside groups, and I don&amp;#039;t want it... Though Connolly did interview for the SFC endorsement along with three other hopefuls, his announcement today was bold, and may stave off the kind of barnstorming that the nonprofit spurred in Illinois last year. Operatives there successfully pushed union-busting measures through the state legislature, and catalyzed a war against Chicago Public that still rages today. For those who thought we would elect a transgender president of the United States before they saw a Democratic machine crush organized teachers, Rahm Emmanuel delivered a surprising performance. The mayor pocketed more than $700,000 from SFC donors for his last campaign and subsequently aided in provoking a teachers&amp;#039; strike, closing 50 public schools, and urging for new charters to replace them. In Massachusetts, Connolly remains a frontrunner \u2013 with or without an extra $500,000. Considering that he approved of outside aid from corporate ed crusaders up until today \u2013 the councilor has defended Democrats for Education Reform burning $26,000 in his name \u2013 Boston is still vulnerable to SFC-style subterfuge. Like Chicago and fewer than a dozen other American metropolises, the mayor appoints the Hub&amp;#039;s school board, making for an easy rubber stamp in breaking unions and allowing corporate friends to feast on school budgets. Massachusetts is also the home of Bright Horizons world headquarters and that of its well-endowed sugar daddy -- more than half-a-dozen Bain executives have served on SFC boards -- as well as of New Profit, Inc., a not-so-surreptitiously named  &amp;quot;venture philanthropy fund&amp;quot; that contributed more than $1 million to SFC in 2010, and that actually boasts a board member from the public relations firm that handled Muammar Qaddafi&amp;#039;s image polishing.  With Boston temporarily rescued from the ed reform fire sale, the rest of the country remains amidst a tantric bipartisan circle jerk over school privatization, with Republicans being especially despicable in their funneling of ed money to cronies. In Florida, the lowly Governor Rick Scott recently proposed giving charters $100 million for new buildings \u2013 even as his education commissioner resigns over revelations that he rigged evaluation formulas to boost test scores at a school backed by Republican whales -- while in blood red Arizona, companies with close ties to charters have secured more than $70 million in contracts from those institutions in the past five years.  In time, it&amp;#039;s inevitable that all schools will be owned by major banks and finance behemoths. Laugh now at the idea of a Walmart Academy where chubby kids wear greeter vests and learn to work the register, and in 10 years you&amp;#039;ll look back and laugh heartily at your shortsightedness. Until then, at least there&amp;#039;s a modicum of relief in the city where this cockamamie socialist idea of public ed originated. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a24458/massachusetts-education-reform-082113/>