It won’t surprise you to know hat here is a lot of money behind the conservative agenda in Texas. But you might be interested to see the connections between the privatization advocates in Texas and national organizations like ALEC.
Julian Heilig Vasquez traces the connections in his series on the Teat, in which he reflects on what is known as neoliberalism.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am not surprised at all. I have been seeing this for quite some time. I “saw” the connections to big business even before I knew about ALEC. Too many similar political abnormalities have been occurring in states infused with Tea Party thought.
Too bad the public is not aware of the various, anti-democratic, big corporation shils that ALEC is. To list their interests and $ bought congress would in of itself, be a revelation that might afford the intellectually lazy citizenry a jolt of reality to what this innocent sounding Trojan Horse group are REALLY up to. Hard to get the public to investigate anything that takes more thought than a Super Bowl ad, so lists like that
might be the best way to unveil these charlatans and their destructive history.
My last year in the classroom was ’09-’10, where I had parents of “Students First”/charter school crusaders in my classroom. I was always a promoter of parents involvement with my students. But, these caustic, anti-teacher vultures were anything but synergistic, win/win advocates. They were instead termites gnawing away at
not only public schools, but my professional reputation and expertise. Critics who only sought out what they perceived as weaknesses. Accusations against me of not teaching math, which was patently ludicrous, then they hopped to, while I may be teaching math, it wasn’t to their child’s, gifted (by their assessment) level; even though
as all teachers know, you teach the objectives for your grade level. It was a frustrating,
insidious, agenda laden ordeal. Such is the stuff of the education vigilantes that never give teachers any credit, but blaze accusations that are covers to destroy the public system, period! It would be an eye opening story to find just who does the funding for this supposed, spontaneous ire against teachers, unions, tenure, etc. The Bush bandits are major recipients of millions, and have been since their intellectually challenged Prez took control and rocketed the campaign to destroy what served the
Republic for so long.