From today's story by the Associated Press:

The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been the biggest player by far in the school reform movement, spending around $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education.

Now the foundation is taking unprecedented steps to influence education policy, spending millions to influence how the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools.

As the Gradebook reported back in July, the foundation has already offered to help Florida put together its Race to the Top application.

(Associated Press photo by Jae C. Hong.)