Word: forstmann
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...What you buy is more important than what you pay. "You buy the wrong business at 25% less than you should, and you take a little longer to go broke," says buyout artist Ted Forstmann. "You buy the right business at 25% more than you should, and you make five times your money instead...
Unlike the ferociously certain Forstmann, I end up in the mushy middle. I don't want to keep any kid from getting out of a bad school now, but I am worried that we won't be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again if we try the wrong experiment. Forstmann, who has a history of good works, is doing good here by playing out the idea that the poor shouldn't be a captive audience for bad schools. Forstmann has demonstrated the demand side. Perhaps, as a Master of the Universe, he'll move on to the supply...
...Forstmann is investing in education because it's where he believes he can get the most "leverage" for his investment. For example, he points out that his top $1,600 stipend goes a long way toward the average Catholic school tuition, which is roughly $2,000 to $5,000 annually. I agree with Forstmann on the magic of Sister Mary William and company. If I'd gone to my neighborhood school instead of the parish school, it's doubtful I would have gone to college on scholarship or have the life I now do, the result of diagramming hundreds...
Which is what these scholarships, once they stop coming out of Forstmann's pocket, will ultimately do. For then they will be vouchers, which set off alarms because they involve tinkering with what Jefferson envisioned as the "gratis" common school, the one institution that could make good on the Constitution's promise of equality. According to a 1997 Gallup poll, most Americans are happy with public schools. Few parents in Greenwich, Conn., would take their child out of its fine public schools for a voucher of $1,600. But in inner-city Hartford, many parents would sensibly embrace them, which...
That's like saying take other passengers off commercial airliners, and we'll all be flying around in roomy comfort like Forstmann on his Gulfstream. Politics is at the heart of the debate over who gets what and who pays for it--whether a free nonsectarian school is one of the gifts of being born in America...