Mercedes Schneider does one of her trademark investigations of the finances of Students Matter, the organization that tried to declare teacher tenure unconstitutional.
It turns out that the organization is funded by the usual billionaires, has spent millions on legal fees, and is deep in debt. It exists to litigate. It wants to ruin teachers’ lives, assuming that’s the best way to help children of color.
Who is on the board?
“Board members include:
former StudentsMatter policy director and former Parent Revolution exec director Ben Austin;
former Chief of School Family and Parent/Community Services for Los Angeles Unified School District Maria Casillas;
former LAUSD superintendent John Deasy;
former California state senator Becky Morgan;
former chief of staff to VP Joe Biden and former chief domestic policy advisor to former Pres Bill Clinton, Bruce Reed;
investment banker and venture capitalist Arthur Rock, and
former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association and founding CEO of Fortify, a pioneer in the software security market, Ted Schlein.
StudentsMatter lists a single staffer, David Stanley:
David Stanley leads major gifts fundraising at Students Matter. He enlists philanthropists to serve as key partners to Students Matter and helps sustain the organization’s high-performing Board.
Prior to joining Students Matter in January 2014, David was Executive Director of Teach For America….”
What a close-knit little world the “reformers” inhabit! Bruce Reed is also CEO of the Broad Foundation that funds Students Matter. Arthur Rock is a major donor to TFA (he personally funds all the TFA interns who work on Capitol Hill and protect TFA).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gross. It’s like incest with the ed deformers.
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Well, I’m sure you know the old saying “Rice is nice but incest is best”.
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Gee, what could possibly go wrong with all those visionary social justice leaders in charge? I’m surprised that with Deasy, Broad and Casillas here in LA, they haven’t single-handedly fixed the schools, fixed the teachers, fixed the unequal distribution of resources, instead they just tried to fix the system and failed. Wonder how that FBI investigation is going Dr, Deasy. Oh wait, that was another kind of fixing.
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Gee, no conflict of interest in ANY of this…..
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See my comment today on the follow-on case to the Vergara decisions. or, if you do not mind this duplication with a few tweaks. The follow-on to Vergara from Students Matter is not a first order case about teacher tenure. It is about state policies that put a cap on charter and magnet schools.
The lawyers who lost the Vergara case have targeted ” the cruel ” limits on charter and magnet schools in Connecticut. The case is Martinez v. Malloy.
According to the lawyers op ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, this will be a federal case, arguing for “a federal constitutional right to challenge laws that force inner city children to attend schools the state knows are failing to provide a minimally accept able education. These laws are especially cruel in Connecticut” ….
The lawyers claim that ” California’s refusal to protect its young citizens (from grossly ineffective teachers) has made federal protection essential. Public education meets the US Supreme Court’s fundamental-right test in Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) because it is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and (is) ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’”
Although the State of Washington v. Glucksberg ruling dealt with assisted suicide the legal arguments focused on due process rights. You can see a summary of the key points in the forthcoming Martinez v. Malloy federal case here. http://studentsmatter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Students-Matter-One-Pagers.pdf
In the WSJ opted written by the lawyers Boutrous and Lipshultz. The argument will go back to Brown v. Board of Education in support of “equal opportunity” as the grounds for eliminating all caps of charter and magnet schools.
I certainly hope the NAACP is paying attention. The case could be a slam dunk precisely because Malloy is a political animal.
My take is that the lawyers want a deregulation of schools. The claims will probably refer to constitutional protections afforded to “personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.”
I also think the lawyers are working on behalf of the idea that “government” money for education follows the student, per Milton Friedman’s perverted concept that a free market exists even when it is tax subsidized.
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Out of the frying pan and into the fire with the perpetrators wearing flame proof suits.
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I love (not really–sarcasm) the assumption that “grossly ineffective teachers” are ONLY in public schools and not charters, even though charters are usually the ones hiring only brand new teachers. Talking out of both sides of their mouths there.
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Laura – long chess game. *sigh*. Thanks for the insight.
It’s kind of hard to understand what “in debt” means in this context. There’s no revenue-generating source for Students Matter. As noted, it exists to litigate. The litigators are part of the ®eform world, no? So really all this means is, no one’s gotten around to balancing the budget via the usual’s checkbook recently.
Or, … is there some suggestion the usual suspects somehow won’t come through in balancing the budget? Seems unlikely to me the elbow wouldn’t pay the ankle. This is just a bookkeeping problem, no?
Else, are they running a ready reason for pulling out if the judicial landscape really sours for them? But that would again, mean stiffing one’s own.
Else, is there some suggestion of improper siphoning of funds?
With all respect and appreciation for Ms Schneider’s following the money, the issue of a deficit here seems underwhelming to me when all the principals involved are multi-millionaires (at least).
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