Levy's seminar

My brother Fred's blog carries a post which included a self-revealing letter from former N.Y.C. Chancellor Harold Levy for his upcoming private seminar for investors on making money on education. Levy has since become a Wall Street lawyer who now works for Palm Ventures in Greenwich, Conn. He's one of the high rollers in corporate school reform. He's also chairing The Capital Roundtable’s ENCORE full-day conference – Private Equity Investing In For-Profit Education Companies,

Here's some back-story to Fred's post.

It was Levy, in a NYT piece back in 2009, while working for Citigroup, who offered us his "5 ways to fix schools."  At that time, I wrote,

Levy, who obviously hadn't yet discovered the 5 ways while he was still in power, now wants to make it "mandatory" that all kids go to college for a year. I suppose he hopes that will keep them out of the job market and off the unemployment line for a while longer and hopes that the feds will pick up the cost of tuition ($8,000 average for state colleges and $25,000 for private). As for those kids who want to take a year off after high school, to work or travel? I suppose we could arrest their parents. How will this "fix" schools? Maybe Levy will tell us later.

Levy helped funnel $500K of DFER money to Shapton.

I also pointed out in the same post that,

Levy ...helped engineer the back-door shipment of $500K to [Al] Sharpton via hedge-fund school reformers DFER which apparently bought Sharpton's temporary allegiance to the "bedfellows" club at EEP.

At the time, Fred himself, pointed out this back-alley deal on his blog.

 So yes, Mr. Levy certainly has a lot to teach his Ownership Society seminarians about political intrigue, manipulation, and how to make a buck or two off of education.

Thanks Fred for keep this story alive.