Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee Why the secret donors? - Guest Comment - Opinions - October 11, 2012 - Sacramento News & Review

Why the secret donors? - Guest Comment - Opinions - October 11, 2012 - Sacramento News & Review:

Why the secret donors?

By Seth Sandronsky 

This article was published on 10.11.12.

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.

Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, a nonprofit and tax-exempt education-reform group that operates in 34 states with a national headquarters in Sacramento, raises money in secrecy to do political advocacy. The group raised $4.6 million in 2010-2011 for its 501(c)(4) nonprofit activities, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
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