The creepy secret group trying to take over your public schools

Progressive Magazine - Don’t look now, but there’s something creepy coming toward you, and it wants to take over your public school system. Sure, it’s connected—through all-important grants—to many of the big names in today’s education reform movement (Gates, Walton, Broad), but most people have probably never heard of it.

This “education reform powerhouse” is the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which goes by the acronym CRPE—or “creepy.” How fitting. While there are many individuals and organizations on the front lines of the free-market education reform movement—from Teach for America, to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to the Recovery School District in New Orleans—CRPE has not been publicly outed. Instead, it has steadily carved out an influential role for itself behind the scenes.

In fact, CRPE operates in a manner that is strikingly similar to ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), the secretive, powerful group funded by the Koch brothers and a large roster of corporations.