Dear Commons Community,

New York Magazine’s featured article this week is a look at Michelle Rhee’s plan to develop an “interest group” named StudentsFirst modeled on the National Rifle Association.  She hopes to raise $1 billion from mostly well-heeled donors – $50 million from twenty individual donors = $1 billion.  The “interests” of her group will essentially be the school reform platform she pushed while superintendent of the Washington, D.C. public schools including performance pay for teachers, expanding charter schools, and ending teacher tenure.  The article goes on to establish that Ms. Rhee has the ear of a number of influential policymakers and financiers and predicts that her organization will be something that will have a voice in shaping in education policy at the national level.

Tony