Why yes, Fox News, that's the ticket. Let's ask viewers whether poor kids should have to clean the cafeteria for their free breakfast and lunch so their little delicate work ethics aren't eroded.

Washington Post:

“I think it would be a good idea if perhaps we had the kids work for their lunches: trash to be taken out, hallways to be swept, lawns to be mowed, make them earn it,” said Ray Canterbury, a Republican from Greenbrier and a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, during debate over Senate Bill 663, also known as the Feed to Achieve Act.

The bill — the first of its kind in the nation — would create a partnership between private donations and public funds to make breakfast and lunch available for free to every student, kindergarten through high school senior, in West Virginia. It’s based on a model program in Mason County that’s improved attendance and decreased discipline problems, according to the school district’s food service director.

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There is a huge rush to judgment right now by the press when it comes to the Boston bombings, eerily reminiscent of the Iraq War runup where everyone in the media simply accepted as fact that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when he didn't.

As Richard Clarke points out, there are some traceable ties between al-Qaeda and Chechnya, but he's at least poking at the unknowns, trying to tease out some nuance.

CLARKE: Well, actually George, Chechens have been involved with al-Qaeda since almost the beginning of al-Qaeda. They were involved in fighting for al-Qaeda in Bosnia. They were involved in fighting against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, so there is a record there. But the real question here is, how do you tell when someone gets radicalized? They're normal, they're happy kids in Cambridge and then something happens, a switch is flipped.

How can the FBI, how can Homeland Security notice when that happens, or when the radicalization occurs? Especially if it's self-radicalization online? It's very, very difficult to do. What I want to know is, what did the Russians do when he went back to Russia? They had already said they were interested in him, and then he goes back to Russian and spends over six months there. What did they do? Did they follow him around? That's a question we need an answer to.

Putin's Russia is a bad place to be if you're not an oligarch. Over the past ten years Russian oligarchs have increased their power and their wealth at the expense of their middle class. Power has been consolidated to the point where the sole difference between Soviet Russia and post-Soviet Russia is that they no longer try to conceal it.

Foreign Policy outlines a brutal history of Chechen oppression by Russians throughout the years. It's worth reading if only to understand the environment the Tsarnaev family fled in 2002.

This is the defining moment in Chechens' modern history, when they were wrenched away from their mountains and dumped like rubbish in an unfriendly land with a flat horizon. Even the Russian government has recognized this was a genocide, and yet few Russians today appreciate the trauma it caused. Everyone lost someone and, when they were allowed home beginning in 1959, many of those bodies came home to Chechnya with them, to be buried in the mountains, not in the foreign steppes.

They were kept together by their faith, by their Sufi Islam with its closed brotherhoods and secret rituals. The generation that grew up in Kazakhstan nursed a seed of grievance. That seed grew in the fertile soil of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, and flowered into a declaration of independence in the dying days of the Soviet Union.

And this:

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The Nation's Greg Kaufmann points out something that he shouldn't have to point out to the White House: namely, why aren't the president and his advisors meeting with actual poor people who will be affected by any budget agreement he makes? We hear about the middle class ad nauseum, but nothing at all about the most vulnerable among us:

Throughout these budget talks, the Obama Administration has projected an image that it is open to good ideas from anyone, and interested in the prosperity of everyone.

So Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein had his day at the White House along with thirteen other corporate heads. The same is true for a group of small business owners as well as some labor leaders and progressive groups. And certainly President Obama has surrounded himself with middle class families throughout these fiscal negotiations.

But there is an omission from the President’s rounds—one that is all the more glaring since this group of people is arguably more vulnerable than anyone to any final budget decisions: low-income Americans who are struggling to climb up from the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

When is their White House meeting? Where is their place at the table?

Surely, this Administration wants to send a message that this White House is open to all Americans. More importantly, it no doubt recognizes that lower-income Americans are working just as hard at their jobs, trying just as hard to create opportunities for their children, and wanting just as much to improve their communities, as are Americans who have more resources.

It is one thing for the President to meet with advocates—and I have the greatest respect for antipoverty advocates and believe in the depth of their knowledge and the ideas they have to offer. But giving lower-income people the opportunity to tell their own stories—in their own words—can lead to insights and ideas that aren’t necessarily reached through secondhand accounts, and rarely permeate the inside-the-beltway bubble.

It really irks me to hear all these overpaid news clowns on cable news, yakking away about how we need to cut Social Security and make working people wait to get Medicare. Why don't they try working for a living?

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Remember this? When Mittens said he didn't care about the very poor?

It's true, he really didn't. Top Romney adviser Stuart Stevens confirmed that attitude in an op-ed written for the Washington Post.

He actually brags about winning voters in every economic level but those earning less than $50,000:

On Nov. 6, Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters. While John McCain lost white voters younger than 30 by 10 points, Romney won those voters by seven points, a 17-point shift. Obama received 4½million fewer voters in 2012 than 2008, and Romney got more votes than McCain.

Barack Obama received 4.5 million more votes than Mitt Romney did. Assuming that Stuart Stevens is correct about his claim of winning all groups earning more than $50,000, what does that say about who the "middle class" is, and who the "very poor" are?

Courtesy of Mother Jones, a graph depicting income levels in the US:

See where that median is? Nowhere near $50,000 per year. The idea that the middle class earns $50,000 or above across this nation is a 1950s myth. Income levels have declined, not risen. So really, what Stuart Stevens meant to say was that he's proud of the fact that he won the rich, white people vote and Republicans should be strutting their stuff instead of being ashamed.

In other words, they don't care about the very poor, which Mitt was honest enough to admit way back in February before they taught him to lie better.

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Nothing says self-examination by media and pundits better than watching a Sunday show and seeing the host quickly cut off a discussion about poverty. Because shhhhhhh. We don't talk about poverty in public. We don't want anyone to think there's poverty in the United States. That's for other countries. Like the starving children in Africa your mother tells you about when you don't want to eat your peas. Shhhhh.

Yes, there are starving children in Africa. I am not trying to belittle that reality. But there is another reality right here at home: Poverty is a real problem.

Worse, the deepest poverty is in what I will call the "austerity states": Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Poverty in those states is skyrocketing, with a very, very small state-provided social safety net. They've seen some of the hardest economic times in a terrible economy, and the people most deeply affected are those without enough education to get away from the industries which for so long have held them hostage: Coal mining in West Virginia and Kentucky; agriculture in Mississippi; agriculture and manufacturing in South Carolina. South Carolina is, of course, a right to work state, so even when the employment rate goes up, wages aren't necessarily sufficient for people to lift themselves out of their economic hole. Like Arkansas, home to Wal-Mart headquarters and one of the most wealthy families in the nation.

Yet. Watch George Stephanopoulis deflect all discussion of it away by cutting Katrina VandenHeuvel off and redirecting the discussion back to immigration reform and the Hispanic vote. I actually give Greta Van Susteren some props for bringing it up, even though she intended for it to be a slam on current policies, and bigger kudos to Katrina VandenHeuvel for starting to hammer on it a bit before GSteph interrupted her. Why did he?

Because talk of poverty is unseemly? Because if we don't talk about it, poverty will suddenly disappear into the broader-brush portrait of an invincible nation? Because, like magic, it will simply be disappeared by immigration reform and symbolic gestures by our Congress while states gut their safety nets while millions of people cling to the shreds by their fingernails?

It's time to talk about poverty and to be straight about it. Poverty isn't sensitive to race. White, black and brown people live in poverty. Good, hardworking people. It's not shameful to be impoverished, but it is shameful to ignore them or give once a year to charity and feel like the duty has been filled.

Some very good people are pushing ahead to address poverty in the context of education, for example, like the AFT and their efforts in West Virginia and Ohio. Recognizing that education doesn't happen in a vacuum, the AFT has tackled these areas as projects for robust public-private partnerships in order to improve the economic status of the entire area. They see this as what must happen in order for children to succeed educationally, and build on that success to innovate and create new ways to improve their own communities.

I would like for all of the oligarchs who spent over a billion dollars of their own money trying to elect Mitt Romney to imagine what they could have done with that money to improve the lots of people who not only lack resources, but opportunities. I would like for them to visit McDowell County and Cincinnati to see what solution-driven investments in poverty and education look like and conversely, what toll poverty takes on the souls of people struggling for survival. Success isn't even in their vocabulary.

Last week George Lucas announced he was giving most of his $4 billion fortune to innovate and improve public education. I applaud Mr. Lucas, but guardedly, because I fear he will take the same tack the Gates Foundation is using with their "education reform" efforts. Educators are already calling upon him to take an entirely different approach, and there is reason for some cautious optimism, based on his statement:

Filmmaker George Lucas plans to use the $4 billion he will get for selling Lucasfilm to Walt Disney Co. to help education.

Lucas, of San Anselmo, observed that a good storyteller is ultimately a teacher — "using the arts as a means of making education emotionally meaningful" — but that the educational system often fails to make use of the tools at its disposal.

"When I was in high school, I felt like I was in a vacuum, biding time. I was curious, but bored. It was not an atmosphere conducive to learning," he recalled.

"It's scary to think of our education system as little better than an assembly line with producing diplomas as its only goal. Once I had the means to effect change in this arena, it became my passion to do so — to promote active, lifelong learning. I believe in the artisan school of learning, through apprenticeships and Aristotelian questions and discussion."

In this light, he created his educational charities, Edutopia and the George Lucas Educational Foundation, which boost educational innovations, cooperative and project learning, mentorship, parental involvement and technological advances.

All of these are great, but if there's no parallel effort to address the issue of poverty in learning environments I fear limited success no matter how creative or robust the learning tools might be.

Until the elephant in the room called poverty is named and tamed, I don't see how we can realistically talk about progress in other areas, and that goes for our Sunday pontificators and their enabling hosts, too.

Transcript follows below the fold.

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I got to thinking about the fact that the historic Stock Market Crash of 1929 took place two days before Halloween, ruining the holiday for millions.

The Crash was actually a two-day affair, with the market plunging 12.8% on October 28th, and another 11.7% the very next day, loosing nearly a quarter of its total value in just two days (today's equivalent of losing 3,200 points). With no safety-nets like the FDIC or Unemployment Insurance, the Middle Class was devastated as banks lost people's entire life savings in the stock market. Try to imagine, your bank "losing" all of your money, and not a damn thing you can do about it. What would you do? No job, no money, and no help on the way (until Roosevelt promised "a chicken in every pot" "a New Deal between the government and the American People" in 1932. [correction: actually, it was a 1932 GOP ad that promised everyone chicken.])

In the immediate aftermath, crime spiked (uncorroborated) just as it does every time people become desperate & easily irritable. Halloween became "Hell Night" as mischievous kids with no money and lots of time on their hands turned to acts of vandalism on Halloween.

By 1936, to curb this rise in mayhem among kids with nothing better to do, the Roosevelt Administration encoraged the creation of local events to provide activities for children and their families:

WPA posters of Halloween Skating Carnival in Central Park, 1936
 

By 1939, the rash of vandalism was no longer a common occurrence, giving birth to the term "Tricks or Treats" as an idle threat for neighbors that if they didn't provide candy... well... remember all than vandalism a few years back? (okay, it was "extortion"... but the cute kind.)

Under FDR, government stepped in and changed peoples' lives, not just the big stuff like protecting your money and providing jobs, but even expressing concern for families because back then, people understood that the future of our country depended on the future of our children.

A little thought to carry with you this holiday. Happy Halloween.

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Paul Ryan gave a speech yesterday. About poverty. That's right, the guy who blasted his way into a soup kitchen so he could wash clean pans and give the illusion that he cares about hungry people stood up on a stage and gave a speech so he could give the illusion he cares about poor people. No, really. He did.

This clip, put out by the Romney campaign, summarizes the Romney-Ryan view of poor folks. You see, it's all your fault, you single parents, you less educated folks. It's your fault, but it's also just a lack of opportunity. But mostly, it's your fault because you're all a bunch of dependent, irresponsible slackers who look to Daddy Government to take care of you.

Delivered with a smirk, of course. A somewhat self-satisfied smirk, at that.

After extolling the virtues of an "opportunity-driven free enterprise society", Congressman Ryan laid the smackdown on the poors, saying this (via Politico):

“With a few exceptions, government’s approach has been to spend lots of money on centralized, bureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs,” Ryan said. “ … The problem is, starting in the 1960s, this top-down approach created and perpetuated a debilitating culture of dependency, wrecking families and communities. This was so obvious to everyone by the 1990s that, when a major welfare program was finally reformed, the law was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic president.”

Let's just come out and say it plainly: You people of color are dependent because you are all welfare queens and slackers.

Why did I interpret it that way? Ryan's reference to the 60s was a clear signal that he was about to whale on the mythical poor folk of the 60s, who are always brown or black, live in government-owned housing (they called them 'projects') and mooch.

You moochers, Paul Ryan wants you to know it's all your fault but he's going to help you anyway, and he's going to do it by removing all those restrictions that are in place to ensure people who actually are in need get what they need. Via Huffington Post:

Ryan noted that Americans born into poor families are more likely to stay poor as adults than Americans born into wealthy families.

Well, duh. That's what happens when you have no estate taxes. The wealthy become dynasties unto themselves. Yes, I think it's fair to say that children of poor folks have a more difficult row to hoe than children of the wealthy.

A Romney administration, Ryan said, would help restore mobility by turning the open-ended commitments of federal anti-poverty programs into "block grants" -- fixed chunks of money the federal government sends to states each year regardless of the amount of need. States, in turn, get more leeway to design their own programs.

"The federal government would continue to provide the resources, but we would remove the endless federal mandates and restrictions that hamper state efforts to make these programs more effective," Ryan said. "If the question is what's best for low-income Ohioans, shouldn’t we let Ohioans make that call?"

If you believe this, you also believe Romney would have saved the auto industry. There's a reason these programs are funded and regulated at the federal level. Can you imagine, for example, a scenario where the federal government hands off a huge chunk of money to a state like Alabama, who then allocates it in a convenient fashion which might not include people who most need it?

I can. Or let's say they aren't quite that blatant, but at the state level decide they should privatize all services to the poor and force restrictions on those receiving assistance that they must only seek assistance from those private organizations who stand to profit?

Paul Ryan would call that free enterprise. I call it theft.

As if his condescending, smirky, high and mighty attitude wasn't enough in this speech, he actually did deliver some policy proposals. I'm sure Chuck, Dave and Bill Koch are all gratified. Huffington Post reports on that too:

Part of the problem with programs that haven't received the block grant treatment, Ryan said, is that they perpetuate "government dependency." But he also said government spending itself is a threat to people who rely on safety net programs for food and health care.

"When government’s own finances collapse, society's most vulnerable are the first victims, as we are seeing right now in the troubled welfare states of Europe," he said. "Many there feel that they have nowhere to turn for help, and we must never let that happen in America."

Ryan also said government spending discourages people from giving to charity. "Debt on this scale is destructive in so many ways, and one of them is that it crowds out civil society by drawing resources away from private giving."

Oh yes, let's serve some shame with a little fear sprinkled in for good measure. Did anyone think to mention to Paul Ryan that the United States government is in no danger of collapse? It might also be a good time to point out to him that austerity programs in Europe aren't working. Europe and the UK in particular are seeing a shrinking economy, not one that is growing, as Paul Krugman noted:

Schularick and Taylor have an update to their article on post-crisis economic performance. They previously showed that the United States is doing a bit better than one might have expected from the historical record. Now they show that the UK is doing significantly worse:

Hmmm. A bit better. Let's not mention that government dependency thing called the stimulus, shall we? Wouldn't want to wreck Ryan's narrative.

I wonder whether Paul Ryan felt dependent and shamed when he collected Social Security after his father's death and paid for college with it. After all, he didn't need the money, seeing as how his family's business (government built that), kept food on their table and the lights on. Did it make him feel dirty to collect a paid-for benefit?

If so, he could atone by giving back his college degree, for starters. And paying some extra taxes on that inherited money that keeps such a robust income stream going to his family. Does his mom feel shamed and dirty for being on Medicare? No?

Maybe Paul should just take his Ayn Rand nonsense, sit down, and STFU. I cannot wait until this smirky, cocky little twerp isn't on my radar anymore.

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Mitt Romney's appearance on 60 Minutes Sunday night was generally awful. Between making the asinine claim that emergency rooms provide adequate health care for the uninsured to his assertion that he could drop tax rates by 20 percent without causing harm to anyone, he just proves over and over that he's not up to the task of campaigning, much less governing.

But this little segment is as cynical and as absurd as his claim about emergency rooms. When asked specifically how he would "shrink government," his answer is that he will turn certain programs over to the states where the costs will not grow beyond the inflation rate. Here's the snippet, beginning at about one minute in:

Pelley: You would move some government programs to the states. What would they be?

Romney: Well, for instance, Medicaid is a program that’s designed to help the poor. Likewise we have housing vouchers and food stamps and these help the poor. I’d take the dollars for those programs, send them back to the states and say “You craft your programs at the state level and the way you think best to deal with those that need that kind of help in your state.”

Pelley: So how does moving those programs to the states bring relief to the taxpayer?

Romney: Because I’d grow them only at the rate of inflation or in the case of Medicaid, at inflation plus one percent. That’s a lower rate of growth than we’ve seen over the past several years, a lower rate of growth than has been forecast under federal management. And I believe on that basis you’re going to see us save about $100 billion dollars a year.

Pelley: So you’re going to cap the growth on those social welfare programs.

Romney: Exactly right.

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This is one of the most frustrating things for me as a Democrat: The problems of poverty have simply disappeared from the national political discussion. It's not as if we don't have poor people anymore, right? Obviously, the topic doesn't test well in focus groups, or we'd hear about it. But what does this say about the party's historic claim to protect the poor and needy? Not too much, I'm afraid. Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, writes:

Underneath the statistics, hidden behind the desolation of the poor in the poorest big city in the United States, lies one of most intractable political dilemmas of our era: Can the Democratic party, the party of the left, address issues of poverty and want in today’s political environment? For example, can they talk about hunger?

Hunger has grown sharply since the financial collapse of 2008, although it is felt acutely by a relatively small percentage of the population. In 2007, 12.2 percent of Americans experienced what the Department of Agriculture describes as “low food security,” including 4 percent who fell into the category of very low food security. By 2011, the percentage of those coping with low food security rose to 16.4 percent, and those experiencing very low food security went up to 5.5 percent.

The U.S.D.A. defines “low food security” as a lack of access “at all times to enough nutritious food for an active, healthy life.” It defines “very low food security” as individuals going without or with very little food “at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food.”

Looked at through the calculus of contemporary partisan politics, the U.S.D.A. data demonstrates that in 2011 low food security was a problem for just under one in eight whites — a matter of concern but for many white voters, a virtually invisible issue. Very low food security affects the lives of only one in 24 whites.For African Americans, low food security is a problem affecting one in four, and one in ten experience very low food security. The percentage of Hispanics who experience low food security is higher than the percentage of blacks, although the percentage of Hispanics suffering very low food security is slightly lower.

[...] The issue of hunger sheds light on the broader politics of poverty.

Democrats have concluded that getting enough votes on Nov. 6 precludes taking policy positions that alienate middle-class whites. In practice this means that on the campaign trail there is an absence of explicit references to the poor — and we didn’t hear much about them at the Democratic National Convention either.

Republicans, in turn, see taking a decisive majority of white votes as their best chance of winning the presidency. The 2012 electorate is likely to be 72% white, according to a number of analyses. In this scenario, Republicans need to get at least 62 percent of the white vote to win, and Democrats need to get 38 percent or more of the white vote.

Elijah Anderson, a sociologist at Yale and the author of several highly praised books about race and urban America, including “The Cosmopolitan Canopy,” organized the symposium. When I asked him about the Democrats’ problems in addressing poverty, Anderson wrote back in an email:

Apparently, the Republicans have backed the Democrats, and President Obama in particular, into the proverbial racial corner. It is a supreme irony that Obama, the nation’s first African-American President, finds himself unable to advocate for truly disadvantaged blacks, or even to speak out forthrightly on racial issues. To do so is to risk alienating white conservative voters, who are more than ready to scream, “we told you so,” that Obama is for “the blacks.” But it is not just the potential white voters, but the political pundits who quickly draw attention to such actions, slanting their stories to stir up racial resentment. Strikingly, blacks most often understand President Obama’s problems politically, and continue to vote for him, understanding the game full well, that Obama is doing the “best he can” in what is clearly a “deeply racist society.” It’s a conundrum.

The issue of race helps to explain another development in academia as well as in the public debate: the near abandonment of the once powerful tradition of exposing the exploitation of the poor.

For the past several weeks, former Oakland public school teacher Anthony Cody has been engaged with the Gates Foundation on issues surrounding education reform, poverty's impact on learning ability, charter schools and other issues.

This week was the final exchange, and it was a doozy. Moreover, it parted an opaque curtain on how nonprofits view teachers and their contribution to the dialogue.

The discussions have centered around charter schools and how they play into the for-profit education push, particularly in schools serving impoverished students who are also not performing on standardized tests. Cody's final entry concerned the profit motive in education "reform." I have the impression the Gates folks really didn't appreciate what he said very much.

Cody wrote:

The market, by definition, seeks to tap the desire to make money as a motivation for solutions. Marketeers envision an environment where creative or ambitious entrepreneurs will establish new schools, new ways to educate, and this will result in efficiency and innovation. But a decade in, we are discovering some huge problems with the way market solutions play out in the real world.

In 2010, the Gates Foundation laid out a strategy for three specific innovations to reform the public education system. Public and corporate partners were listed, to share in the implementation of each innovative program goal.

For the innovation it called, "Measure of teacher effectiveness and systems for helping teachers improve," it labeled the risk "high." The partners listed are "U.S. Department of Education; school districts; charter schools; teacher groups." The risk spelled out in this plan was "Will teachers, including their unions, schools, districts, and states, be willing to change? Will budget cuts slow the work?"

Cody goes on to point out that the Gates Foundation takes a data-driven approach to education, and to that end has partnered with Rupert Murdoch's organization Wireless Generation to build tools to drive data-driven assessment of teacher performance. Can anyone see anything wrong with that picture? Cody did.

Wireless Generation is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. A year ago, the state of New York awarded a no-bid contract to Wireless Generation in part to compile a statewide database of student test scores. The phone-hacking scandal at Wireless Generation's parent company, News Corp., led the state comptroller to void the contract out of concerns about privacy. However, the state later decided to move forward with the database project, at least in part as the result of the Gates Foundation's prior sponsorship of a multi-state student-data system worth $76 million—$44 million of which went to Wireless Generation. In other words, the Gates Foundation has the financial wherewithal to make sure the systems it favors go through.

Cody also pointed out that private equity investors are being primed for large investments in education, pointing to a recent seminar marketing piece put out by Capital Roundtable. When I say that there's an enormous amount of money waiting on the sidelines for privatized education, it's not just a feeling. Here are the numbers Capital Roundtable touted in their marketing piece:

Education is now the second largest market in the U.S., valued at $1.3 trillion. So while an industry of this size will always be scrutinized by regulators, the most onerous recent changes are likely over, and investors should face an easier climate down the road. And while eventual passage is not guaranteed, several pieces of legislation favoring the for-profit industry have been proposed in Congress.

In the K-12 space, the federal “Race To The Top” initiative has enabled a growing level of privatization in the K-12 segment, and rewarding districts for embracing alternative models, technological advances, and locally-based criteria.

And this:

You’ll hear why the recovering economy is a motivating force for prospective for-profit education students. Industry self-regulation combined with greater employment prospects are making consumers more comfortable they will come out of for-profit programs with a job.

They're not even embarrassed. They're selling it.

Suffice it to say, the strongest Gates Foundation pushback was on Cody's assertions about their role in privatizing education and what they stand to gain as a result of that process. At the end of his post he lists five different areas where they have been actively promoting the privatization/capitalization of public education, including:

• $2 million grant for the Anschutz-produced movie Waiting for Superman, which also gave Michelle Rhee her launch into profitization ventures.
• Funding for Jeb Bush's Excellence in Education Foundation, another group pushing privatization.
• Seed money for the parent trigger tricker group Parent Revolution, the spark for the current "Won't Back Down" anti-teacher movie released this month.
• Funding for the Media Bullpen, a group which grades media coverage on how supportive they are to the charter school narrative.
• Funding to create the Cities for Education Partnership, which specifically states as a goal the acceleration of "growth of high-impact entrepreneurial education solutions".
• Finally, there is their grant to ALEC, intended to drive legislation on data-driven solutions. Despite their promise not to further fund ALEC projects, they didn't cancel the existing grant either.

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