Etc.

A custody fight is brewing over who will get Patrick, the horribly abused pit bull who has been nursed back to health.
_____

Guess who really is calling the shots at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District?

The Broad Foundation, of course.

The picture of ol' Eli DOES make him look like a vulture philanthropist.

Controversy over Broad, Gates and other high-powered education donors raises a chicken-and-egg question: Is the lure of big bucks driving public-policy decisions, such as CMS' pursuit of performance pay? Or are the philanthropists following the best thinking on reform, including ideas from local leaders?

Gorman insists there's no "Broad blueprint." He says he'd be working toward performance pay without grants, but he acknowledges that outside money has kept the project powering ahead through the recession.

The federal government and the Gates Foundation are the big spenders on CMS performance pay, according to a CMS tally. Broad's money is going toward "performance management," a data-focused project that includes performance pay and test development.

Broad's pervasive ties to educational leaders - from CMS to U.S. Education Secretary and former Chicago superintendent Arne Duncan - raise questions among skeptics.

Neal Thornburg, who calls himself a concerned Mecklenburg taxpayer, said he started delving into Broad's connections to CMS and other education groups, such as Teach For America, and found it "kind of frightening."

He wonders what kind of favors are being traded, and whether "a core of administrators with so much invested in Broad's educational philosophy" can objectively report results.

These "reformers" have been a collective disaster:

Has this big money made the big impact that they—as well as teachers, administrators, parents, and students—hoped for? In the first-of-its-kind analysis of the billionaires’ efforts, NEWSWEEK and the Center for Public Integrity crunched the numbers on graduation rates and test scores in 10 major urban districts—from New York City to Oakland—which got windfalls from these four top philanthropists.

The results, though mixed, are dispiriting proof that money alone can’t repair the desperate state of urban education. For all the millions spent on reforms, nine of the 10 school districts studied substantially trailed their state’s proficiency and graduation rates—often by 10 points or more. That’s not to say that the urban districts didn’t make gains.

The good news is many did improve and at a rate faster than their states 60 percent of the time—proof that the billionaires made some solid bets. But those spikes up weren’t enough to erase the deep gulf between poor, inner-city schools, where the big givers focused, and their suburban and rural counterparts.

That's because poverty is at the bottom of it. And thanks to these billionaires and other filthy rich getting more and more handouts courtesy of the average American taxpayer, the economic situation overall is getting worse.