Most people who are active in school board elections never heard of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), know nothing of the duplicity of Stand for Children, and are unaware of the privatization agenda of corporate reformers.

This article by Justin Miller in the American Prospect seeks to demystify the strange confluence between hedge fund managers and the charter school movement.

Miller tells the story of the transformation of school board elections, once a sleepy affair, now attracting large sums of money from out of district and out of state organizations. The key organization in the race to control local school boards is Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the hedge fund managers’ group.

He gives illustration of how they operate by focusing on school board elections in Indianapolis, and to a lesser extent, Minneapolis and Denver.

Flying under the radar, DFER bundled money to put their allies in charge.

The list of original funders is chock-full of Wall Street A-listers. There was Joel Greenblatt, head of Gotham Asset Management and author of the seminal high-finance book You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. There were Charles Ledley and James Mai of Cornwall Capital, perhaps most well known for betting big against the subprime-mortgage market, which was depicted in the book-turned-blockbuster The Big Short. There was David Einhorn, head of Greenlight Capital, who has drawn scrutiny on more than one occasion for financial wrongdoing.

Early on, DFER identified then-Senator Barack Obama and then–Newark Mayor Cory Booker as promising politicians willing to break with teachers unions. DFER was instrumental in convincing Obama to appoint charter-friendly Chicago Superintendent Arne Duncan as secretary of education, and it spent a lot of time and money lobbying the administration to pursue reformist education policies like Race to the Top and Common Core. Tied to Obama’s coattails, DFER was now one of the most influential political players in the ascendant education-reform movement.

Who is involved in DFER? Miller answers:

The list of original funders is chock-full of Wall Street A-listers. There was Joel Greenblatt, head of Gotham Asset Management and author of the seminal high-finance book You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. There were Charles Ledley and James Mai of Cornwall Capital, perhaps most well known for betting big against the subprime-mortgage market, which was depicted in the book-turned-blockbuster The Big Short. There was David Einhorn, head of Greenlight Capital, who has drawn scrutiny on more than one occasion for financial wrongdoing.

Early on, DFER identified then-Senator Barack Obama and then–Newark Mayor Cory Booker as promising politicians willing to break with teachers unions. DFER was instrumental in convincing Obama to appoint charter-friendly Chicago Superintendent Arne Duncan as secretary of education, and it spent a lot of time and money lobbying the administration to pursue reformist education policies like Race to the Top and Common Core. Tied to Obama’s coattails, DFER was now one of the most influential political players in the ascendant education-reform movement.

It is important for reports like Miller’s story to be circulated widely, among school board members across the nation. They need to understand where the “dark money” is coming from. They need to know why a race that once could be self-financed now requires large sums of money. They need to know who DFER is, who Stand for Children is, and know that their agenda is privatization of public schools. As the recent election in Nashville showed, outside money poured in but it was not enough to defeat the candidates who were fighting to improve the public schools, not to replace them. Since the “reformers” always fly under a false flag, promising to improve public schools and to save children from “failing schools,” democracy requires that voters know who they are and what they seek.