Joel Greenblatt is a hedge fund guy from NYC who, like many hedge fund guys, has it All Figured Out and occasionally writes books to share his insights with rest of us.
Of course, that includes education. It was Greenblatt and fellow Rich Guy John Petry who recruited Eva Moskowitz to take their little charter school, Harlem Success Academy, and turn it into the Success Academy juggernaut. They even came up with some creative means of paying her huge compensation.
Greenblatt's new book of wisdominess resulted in an interview with Michael Cannivet, a "markets" contributor at Forbes.com in which he explains the various topics he writes about ("I thought I could bring a fresh perspective to certain issues I care about"), and one, of course, is education.
In discussing his book of "common sense," Greenblatt includes some standard bromides, like "The biggest factor that unleashes upward mobility is education" which is a good example of conventional wisdom that isn't actually rooted in facts (I'm no Raj Chetty fan, but he has tackled the issue of mobility pretty effectively). Also, college grads earn more than high school diploma folks "so we've got to do better," and while the interview doesn't get into details, I'm guessing he doesn't mean "we need to unrig the system so that people on the bottom are better paid."
But when it comes to education, there are lots of things that Greenblatt doesn't know. His idea is workaround solutions. He illustrates this with a riddle-- How do you beat Tiger Woods? Don't play CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Another Rich Guy Wants To Fix Education