Why the secret donors?
By Seth Sandronsky
Seth Sandronsky is a freelance journalist in Sacramento Related stories: Mayor Kevin Johnson and wife Michelle Rhee bring Students First education road show back to Sacramento The mayor asks, “Is education the civil-rights issue of our time?” SN&R, 02.02.12. |
StudentsFirst does not have to share donors’ names and none are on the IRS’s Form 990 that the group filed for the tax year ending July 31, 2011. IRS policy gives StudentsFirst a legal shield for donor secrecy. In this respect, Rhee’s group resembles GOP strategist Karl Rove’s Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Rove aims, of course, to boost the ranks of Republican officeholders this November.
Rhee is a Democrat, at least nominally. Her education-reform agenda includes upending teacher tenure, establishing teacher merit pay, increasing publicly funded charter and online schools, and expanding standardized testing. The annual math and reading test scores of public-school students as the lead measure of their classroom achievement looms large in the education reform agenda of StudentsFirst. Rhee’s group aims to split public-school teachers from pupils and their families.
StudentsFirst is busy at the California state Capitol and at state houses nationwide, calling for new rules for pub