Hedge fund dads discover the public school was fine. They just didn't want to share it.

I read this article and had to set my coffee down before I threw it.

Hedge fund presidents, VCs, BILL FUCKING ACKMAN — these people are yanking their kids out of public schools and shipping them to $75,000-a-year private academies that teach ‘negotiation, sales and public speaking’ to kindergartners with AI tutors. They call teachers ‘guides.’ They promise the future. They don’t have to report a goddamn thing to the state about whether any of it works.

You know who does have to report? The public school down the road. The one these parents just walked away from. The one that took their tax dollars, educated them when they were kids, and produced the people who now lecture the rest of us about ‘reimagining curriculum’ while sipping oat milk in Palo Alto.

Declare the public system broken — your system, the one that made you — and use that as the excuse to build a private one with a door that only opens for $75,000. The ‘innovation’ is a velvet rope. The ‘personalization’ is just your kid and a screen. The ‘life skills’ are sales pitches for fourth-graders. And the ‘guides not teachers’ line is corporate HR horseshit designed to dodge what teachers actually do.

Stanford’s education researchers said these AI schools have ‘negligible scientific-type empirical evidence.’ Translation: rich people are gambling their kids’ education on an unproven product because they can afford to lose. The rest of us can’t.

And here’s the part that should make every working parent spit: when the rich pull their kids out, the public school loses political cover. The loudest parents are gone. The school board meetings go quiet. The funding fights get easier to lose. The public school doesn’t just lose a student. It loses the parent who would’ve shown up.

This isn’t innovation. This is exit. And exits only work if somebody stays behind to keep the lights on for the kids whose dads aren’t hedge fund managers.

Bill Ackman can pay $75K a year to call first-grade teachers ‘guides.’ My kid’s teacher doesn’t need a new title. She needs a raise, smaller class sizes, and parents who show up to the school board meeting instead of fleeing to Palo Alto with a check.

Family values, my ass. A value you flee from is a slogan in a tote bag.

Eat shit, Bill. You knew exactly what you were doing.

Source story: High-income families shift to AI-based and life-skills K-8 schools.