In this article, we explore how the World Bank operationalizes its focus on poverty alleviation in one of the most controversial arenas of educational change: the expansion of privately provided schooling. We argue that the Bank's role in promoting private provision has been far more complicated than most critics have discerned. It has involved several distinctive forms of policy entrepreneurship alongside very limited investment an lending. Policy talk, policy decisions, and operational activities have diverged in ways that raise real questions about the functioning and efficacy of the Bank. Drawing on organizational sociology, this article indentifies several distinct disjunctures among Bank activities related to private educational provision and characterizes these disjunctures as forms of organizational hypocrisy.