Smack dab in the middle of Greater Hedgistan is Harlem.

[Hannah Bell]

Encompassing the lower and east side of Manhattan and extending north to Greenwich, Conn., is a kingdom that New York magazine has dubbed “Greater Hedgistan.” Of the world’s hedge funds with more than $1 billion in assets, a significant majority is based in Greater Hedgistan.

Smack dab in the middle of Greater Hedgistan is Harlem.

These two worlds—one rich, white, and powerful; the other poor, African American, and Latino but located on prime real estate—meet in the charter school world, although not as equal partners.

“Charters have attracted benefactors from many fields,” a New York Times article noted almost a year ago. “But it is impossible to ignore that in New York, hedge funds are at the movement’s epicenter.”

Charters are edging out traditional public schools in Harlem and other poor neighborhoods—and the charters are overwhelmingly controlled by hedge fund directors and finance capitalists who sit on the boards of directors that are legally responsible for running the charter and establishing its financial, educational, and personnel policies. (There is more than a little irony that New York, home to one of the fiercest battles for community control of schools in the 1960s, is now a prime example of rich white billionaires controlling the education of low-income children of color.)

http://queensteacher2.blogspot.com/2011/01/money-drives-education-reform.html