Washington State Fight between Fully-Funding Public Ed and Charter Schools
Just Like Michelle Rhee's Students first only BETTER
Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers
Let's start with charters.
You may recall the "yet another faux ed reform group" called Act Now for Washington Students. This group is organized by the usual suspects - LEV, Stand for Children, DFER and the Washington State Charter Schools Association. All these get money from the Gates Foundation.
They have formed a PAC that hopes to raise (and presumably spend) $500,000 just for this legislative session to influence legislators on charter schools. They have already spent $20K on 13 House members (each got $1,000) including Seattle's charter cheerleader, Eric Pettigrew. This is in addition to the number of print and tv ads running. It is not cheap to run a local ad during football Sunday.
Oddly, ANWS doesn't mention this PAC at their website or their Facebook page. Now if you wanted parents to be all in, wouldn't you tell them this and be asking them for money? (WSCSA does have a Save Washington Charter Seattle Schools Community Forum: Washington State Fight between Fully-Funding Public Ed and Charter Schools:
