The New York State Education Department is governed by the New York Board of Regents, which oversees education and professional certification in every field.

The Regents have recently come to rely on a small group called the Regents Research Fellows to develop policy and curriculum. This group is privately funded.

Reporter James M. Odato at the Albany Times-Union described this shadow operation:

Odato writes:

A team of two dozen well-paid analysts embedded in the State Education Department is having a dramatic impact on a reform agenda that’s causing controversy throughout New York.

None are public servants.

Supported with $19 million in donations from some of the nation’s wealthiest philanthropists, the Regents Research Fund team makes up a little-known think tank within the education agency. It is helping drive reforms that affect the state’s 3.1 million public school students and employees of almost 700 school districts.

The three-year-old operation, which now comprises 27 full-time staffers and a half-time intern, is unique in public education systems nationwide.

The group is an institute charged with helping the state Board of Regents and Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. find ways to improve student performance and ensure graduates are ready for college or careers.

Barely heard of outside education circles and a mystery even within them, the “Regent fellows” are paid from entities such as the Gates Foundation and some salaries approach $200,000 a year. The arrangement is stirring concern in some quarters that deep-pocketed pedagogues are forcing their reform philosophies on an unwitting populace, and making an end run around government officers.

“We’re a public education system,” said Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Long Island’s Rockville Centre. “Having the wealthy pay for it, you’re seeing an agenda that is being pushed … at a rapid pace, and outside the system of public accountability.”

Their responsibilities are extensive:

The fellows have been involved in mapping teacher and principal evaluations, redoing student exams and working through the state’s implementation of the Common Core standards — reforms that have moved with a speed that many parents and teachers across the state have protested as hasty and harsh.

Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, D-Queens, chairwoman of the chamber’s Education Committee (which appoints the Regents), said she can’t explain what the RRF does. “I don’t know anything about it,” Nolan said.

Dennis Tompkins, King’s communications director, said the fellows offer unique skills and expertise. “They’re like rock stars,” he said, adding that without their help “we would be struggling.”

Burris, named the 2013 Principal of the year by the state School Administrators Association and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, calls the fellows agents of destructive policies. She and other question who they are serving — the Board of Regents, or the wealthy patricians who pay the fellows’ salaries.

Some educators have complained:

Many administrators say the fellows don’t listen to comments from the field, and act as de facto representatives of the state agency. “It is unsettling to watch the dismantling of public education by inexperienced employees hired from a special fund,” said Katie Zahedi, a middle school principal in Red Hook. “The fellows have taken the work out of the hands of appropriately hired, official NYSED employees and are acting as policy entrepreneurs.”

The Fellows are well compensated, with salaries near $200,000 each.

This is how it was reported when it began.

So many questions: In what way is this group transparent and accountable? Is it ethical to turn major public policy issues over to a group that operates outside the purview of government?