Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst got some of its start-up money from Rupert Murdoch and now it's getting $1 million from the Walton Family Foundation as part of a $159 million bonanza of corporate education reform funding, which the Walmart heirs see as an "investment" in charter schools, vouchers and more.
The fact that StudentsFirst is funded in million-dollar increments by billionaires, though, doesn't stop it from making two broad, laughable claims in a document (PDF) distributed when representatives of the organization spoke at a meeting (PDF) of North Carolina's Republican-controlled House Committee on Education Reform. The document highlights StudentsFirst's work expanding charter schools and the use of discredited "reforms" such as merit pay in Republican-controlled states such as Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee, and claims that "how we did it" was through grassroots action: "StudentsFirst has a highly active membership of 560,000 members to date, which sent more than 57,000 emails to legislators over the last six months urging them to eliminate seniority based layoffs." Those numbers sound big—until you think about them. "More than 57,000 emails" is, at most, an action rate of 10 percent of their total membership over six months, and probably far less since the document refers to emails, not individuals taking action. By contrast, 50 percent of the individuals on the Daily Kos email list have taken action in the last six weeks. StudentsFirst uses a grassroots veneer, but really works through hiring lobbyists to push policies Republican politicians want to pass anyway.
And if you believe that StudentsFirst is a grassroots organization, maybe, just maybe, you'll also buy that it's just trying to hold its own against the nefarious tactics of teachers unions. We already knew that the basic communications strategy is to work with far-right governors and legislatures to pass anti-teacher, pro-corporate education legislation, then whine when criticized for it, acting as if it's shocking that the organization—with its goals of requiring teachers to teach to the test, making it easier to fire them when flawed tests say they fall short, and turning over public education to private companies—would draw fire from teachers and their unions.
In that vein, the North Carolina document focuses extensively on how "StudentsFirst has attracted under fire from special interest groups who see the organization as a challenge." (StudentsFirst documents are frequently laden with the kind of grammatical errors you really don't want to see from a group looking to influence the education system.) Their evidence? A media consultant working for the American Federation of Teachers has on a number of occasions circulated stories critical of StudentsFirst. Boy, the AFT is really reaching for some exotic, unheard-of strategies to use against StudentsFirst with that one. What's next? Urging teachers to vote for politicians who will fund education and won't try to destroy teachers' workplace protections?
StudentsFirst is a right-wing organization with a thin bipartisan veneer basically trying to provide astroturf cover for the Walton family-Rupert Murdoch-John Kasich-Rick Scott corporate education reform agenda. As such, we can expect to continue hearing from them for some time to come.
