Angel Taveras is often hailed as the prototypical progressive political candidate. But if there exists a chink in this armor it is his support for the so-called “education reform” movement.

Today Taveras travels to Denver to meet with other mayors who, like him have pushed for more charter schools, less experienced Teach for America-style educators and promoted Common Core guidelines that will result in more teaching to the test.

WPRI reports: “Providence Mayor Angel Taveras is joining the mayors of Denver, San Antonio and Sacramento, Calif. for a tour to promote education reform and highlight the work being done to improve public schools in each of their communities.”

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson is not only a former NBA player, he’s also married to Michelle Rhee, a godmother of the ed. deform/high stakes test/ student accountability movement who mentored Deborah Gist. KJ was also fined for not reporting political donations his education reform charity solicited.

The good news is Taveras told WPRI he will introduce Johnson and the other mayors to the members of the Providence Student Union when the group visits the Ocean State in January.

Taveras also co-authored an op/ed in Politico yesterday with the three other mayors he meets with today. Of Providence’s efforts to fix urban education, the post says:

Providence is focused on the strategies necessary to dramatically raise the percentage of students reading on grade level by the end of third grade. Working with a coalition of community partners, the city is placing hundreds of high-impact volunteers in classrooms, boosting kindergarten readiness, expanding meaningful summer learning opportunities and working to address chronic absenteeism. Providence’s comprehensive plan to invest in young people and improve third-grade reading proficiency has earned national recognition, including designation by the National Civic League as a 2012 All-America City for Grade-Level Reading and the $5 million grand prize in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ inaugural Mayors Challenge.

Of course, this isn’t all Providence has done to address public education. Early in his tenure, Taveras fired every Providence teacher. According to WPRI, the layoffs were “part of a cost-cutting strategy, a decision [Taveras] now calls a ‘mistake.'”

Taveras also supported the highly-controversial corporate-style charter school Achievement First, a chain of charters that currently operates in New York in Connecticut. The AF proposal was rejected by Cranston, because that community thought it would be siphon too many resources from traditional public schools, before Taveras openly courted it to come to Providence.

Charter schools and the so-called “school choice” movement have – at best – proven to be beneficial for the few and costly for the vast majority of students in the public school system. Continuing to support this strategy will result in fewer Providence students being in a position to go from “Head Start to Harvard.” To that end, I hope Mayor Taveras looks for a better way to eradicate the achievement gap in public education between affluent suburbs and struggling cities. The education reform status quo has proven entirely ineffective at addressing this issue.

Swashbuckling bets and robust returns are exactly what investors are hoping for — and paying for in outsize fees — when they allocate money to hedge funds. But far too often in recent years, investors have paid hefty fees for lackluster returns.

And last year was no different.

For the fourth consecutive year, most hedge funds failed to beat the market. The average hedge fund gained 6.4 percent last year, according to a composite index that tracks 2,200 portfolios compiled by Hedge Fund Research.

By comparison, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index climbed 16 percent when factoring in dividends. In 2011, the average hedge fund lost more than 5 percent, versus a 2 percent gain for the S.& P. 500.

The Dealbook post also listed the 10 highest paid hedge fund managers, according to Institutional Investor Alpha’s annual “Rich List. At least two of whom Rhode Island invests a considerable sum of our pensioners retirement security with:

• David Shaw made $530 million last year. According to public documents on  the Treasurer’s website, Rhode Island invested $61,453,935 with his hedge fund called DE Shaw Composite Fund LLC.
• Dan Loeb made $380 million last year. According to public documents on  the Treasurer’s website, Rhode Island invested $62,998,187 with his hedge fund Third Point Partners Qualified L.P.

Loeb was featured in Rolling Stone magazine on April 11 about his crusade to take over more pension plans, and his lack of affinity for defined benefit pension plans.

Dan Loeb, who isn’t known as the biggest hedge-fund asshole still working on Wall Street (only because Stevie Cohen hasn’t been arrested yet), is on the board and co-founder of a group called Students First New York. And Students First has been one of the leading advocates pushing for states to abandon defined benefit plans – packages which guarantee certain retirement benefits for public workers like teachers – in favor of defined contribution plans, where the benefits are not guaranteed.

In other words, Loeb has been soliciting the retirement money of public workers, then turning right around and lobbying for those same workers to lose their benefits. He’s essentially asking workers to pay for their own disenfranchisement (with Loeb getting his two-and-twenty cut, or whatever obscene percentage of their retirement monies he will charge as a fee). If that isn’t the very definition of balls, I don’t know what is.

There’s an interesting connection here between hedge fund managers, public teacher pensions and the so-called ed. reform movement; StudentsFirst was founded by Michelle Rhee and she is also on the board with Loeb and other hedge fund managers.

But there’s another interesting local connection too: David Boies, the high-price super lawyer who is defending Raimondo and her pension plan at a great discount is also on the StudentsFirst board with Loeb and Rhee.

According to a Ted Nesi post from November, Boies agreed to defend in court the pension cuts to state workers and teachers for $50 an hour when he usually charges $960.