What’s with StudentsFirst’s Board?

May 172012
 

Most education advocacy organizations post a list of board members on their website. For example, Education Reform Now, Stand for Children, 50CAN, Fairtest, Democrats for Education Reform, and the Alliance for School Choice all make information about board members available on their website.

StudentsFirst does not make this information available on their website. However, the IRS applications for StudentsFirst Institute (501c3) and StudentsFirst (501c4) list the following board members1:

  • Michelle Rhee – President
  • David Coleman – Treasurer
  • Ann-Margaret Michael – Secretary
  • Jason Zimba – Director

Coleman, Michael, and Zimba all work for Student Achievement Partners. And yes, that’s the David Coleman from the Common Core State Standards (nice profile from Dana Goldstein here). Zimba was involved in the writing of the math standards for CCSS. Michael is the operations manager for SAP and Coleman’s assistant.

I’m not pointing this out to suggest a conspiracy is afoot. But it’s strange that such a high-profile reformer with a serious budget couldn’t put together a more diverse board from the get-go. And why no disclosure on the website?

Update (5/19/12): A tweet from Coleman’s newly-created Twitter account: “@studentsfirsthq @rweingarten I told Students First months ago that my service on Board would end; was told new Board to be named in June”

  1. IRS applications are available via the NY Charities Website. ↩
 May 17, 2012  Posted by on May 17, 2012 6 Responses »

Pearson and McGraw-Hill Lobbying: CA, FL, NY and TX

May 022012
 

How much do major publishers and testing companies spend on lobbying? I don’t currently have the time to sift through every state lobbying database, but looking at states that are likely to be major targets is a reasonable starting point.

Here is an overview of Pearson and McGraw-Hill spending on lobbying in four states during 2009, 2010 and 2011:

[Data come from Pearson and McGraw-Hill Lobbying, also available on the data page.]

A few notes:

  • I’m not 100% sure the Florida count is accurate. Florida reports lobbying to both the legislative and executive branches. I added the legislative lobbying to executive lobbying to come up with a total lobbying amount. It’s possible that I double-counted the Florida spending (I’ll post an update when I nail this down.)
  • A few states report lobbying by range (e.g. $0.00 – $9,999, $10,000 – $24,999). To remedy this, I took the mean of the upper end and lower end. The difference between the mean and lower and upper ends was minimal for California, Florida, and New York, but $50k – $60k in Texas.
  • The New York numbers seem low – maybe I missed something in the lobbying database, or maybe Pearson and McGraw-Hill really spend less on lobbying in New York.
  • It’s important to keep context in mind here. Are there other education-related organizations spending lots of money on lobbying? Yes. Are testing companies the biggest spenders? No, in general, although a quick look at a few places indicates they may be the big kids on the block in some years/states. For instance, in the weak union state of Texas, Pearson shelled out between $350,000 and $400,000 on one lobbyist alone in 2009. That’s close to the top end estimates of what the Texas State Teachers Association and Texas branch of the American Federation for Teachers each spent on lobbying during the same year.
  • These states certainly are not representative of the country. These are highly populated states. Lobbying amounts are far lower in most states.
 May 2, 2012  Posted by on May 2, 2012 4 Responses »