The private wealth business of influencing DC’s public education is poised for an important boost in 2026.

That is because the DC council is considering the nominations of four DC charter board members, three of whom would be new to the board. Several of those new board members are connected, through their jobs, to incredible amounts of private money that flow unimpeded, untracked, and unremarked-upon to DC’s publicly funded schools—as well as into nonprofits that exist to support, promote, and increase their influence over (and thus access to) public money in DC’s publicly funded schools.

One nominee, Michelle Yan, was employed by the deputy mayor for education and now works for DC-based CitySchools Collaborative, which works with selected publicly funded DC schools on tutoring, instructional models, and curricula. The most recent tax form for this nonprofit organization, filed earlier this year under the name CityTutor, says its mission is the following (boldface mine):

“To improve the quality of local public education through a primary focus on the incubation and launch of new schools and innovative school models; and to address the services, support, talent and facilities necessary for the delivery of the highest quality education in Washington, DC.”

The phone number on the tax form has a 404 area code—which is for parts of Atlanta. No donors are listed, despite revenue of $8 million and more than a third of its grants going to DC charters. There appears to be no publicly divulged process for how recipients are chosen nor any metric to show improved achievement. In fact, the only thing that has apparently reliably improved via such tutoring is attendance, shown by data released almost 2 years ago. In that time, DC agencies (including Yan’s former employer) have obfuscated about the benefits of high-impact tutoring as they continued to tout (and support) it.

Another charter board nominee has even more extensive ties to private money explicitly intended to influence DC’s publicly funded schools. Maura Marino is currently a partner at the City Fund, which works nationally to expand the charter sector and direct funds to charter schools as well as local organizations that fund DC charters outside DC’s public financing. Among the local organizations City Fund has supported recently are KIPP DC ($15,000); ElectED DC ($600,000); the DC Charter Alliance ($950,000); and Education Forward DC ($6.83 million), the latter of which Marino founded and led. (City Fund also recently supported the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, headquartered here in DC, with $1.5 million.)

In its latest tax filing, from earlier this year (with an Oregon address and a DC phone number), City Fund listed revenue of $118 million—again, with no donors listed. Its mission statement says the following (boldface mine):

“To support city-based nonprofit organizations in their efforts to improve public education outcomes for local children, and to make investments to increase the number of high-performing public schools in cities.”

Now, the lack of information about donors to such incredibly well-funded groups is concerning, especially in light of more than a quarter century of baleful billionaire influence in DC’s publicly funded schools. Also concerning is the fact that the influence these groups wield means power and ultimately profit for them.

But the mission statements alone of these organizations would appear to immediately disqualify these two nominees from any position that would determine publicly funded school openings, locations, closures, policy, accountability, programming, and funding. After all, how does a board member recuse oneself from a day job that consists of re-creating DC public school governance through private actors, funding, and actions?

To be sure, none of this is new. 

The influence of private wealth in our publicly funded schools is long and without much in terms of public oversight or explicitly public benefit (see here and here and here for some examples). So perhaps it is not surprising that there does not appear to be a lot of protection for DC taxpayers around these nominations. 

For instance, according to staffers I contacted in the legal counsel offices for the mayor and the DC council, the legal sufficiency determination for these nominations relied on DC code (specifically, https://code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/council/code/sections/38-1802.14) to determine conflict of interest for DC charter board members. But that part of the code is silent on the influence that their organizations wield here in DC. The charter board’s own bylaws (https://dcpcsb.egnyte.com/dl/hrS8FjBqYk/) outline recusal scenarios that could apply. If these recusal scenarios are followed (and that is an open question, given that charter supporters turned out at the hearing in support of these candidates), both candidates’ extensive policy and fiscal ties to DC’s publicly funded schools could render them unable to vote at all on the board. The only part of DC code that would seem to provide any direct protection for DC taxpayers is 1-1162.23(a), which explicitly outlines conflicts of interest—but whose observance here is another big “if.”

So it is that DC has two charter board nominees tied to millions intended for influencing planning and actions (and ultimately profiting from them) in DC’s public education sector—with the money coming from private, publicly unknown hands, using private, publicly unknown metrics for private, publicly unknown actions. 

While this is absolutely the antithesis of democratically controlled public education, it isn’t a bug but a feature. 

That is because the entire idea behind such groups is that our public institutions are insufficient by themselves for the task of providing high-quality public education. These groups promise better by bringing to bear the one currency that everyone reliably pays attention to: money. The ideas and programs and personnel brought forth by these private funds are inevitably cast as a way to rescue students from whatever misery that public institutions and public oversight have delivered to them. 

Now, whether this is a fair assessment or not is never really part of the conversation, because so many of DC’s students do need help–and for most it is indeed urgent. 

Thus, whatever may be the problems, they are construed mainly as those of the fact of public governance—and not a larger, historical issue (grinding generational poverty, racism, etc.). That this construction supports the entire private wealth public education influence machine is, of course, unmentioned and unexamined. And perhaps predictably, the corollary to the animating presumption that DC’s public institutions are insufficient by themselves for providing high-quality public education is that the public isn’t sufficient, either. 

(Would that everyone in the Wilson Building understand that this includes them, too—but alas!) 

Indeed, as these organizations promise much, their work only ever looks heartening—but for the fact that there is no way to publicly and reliably measure progress on promises and no gauge of public desire specifically for these groups or their work. Instead, what these organizations prioritize and deliver is a return on the investment of their funders while assuming a role in school planning that is supposed to be occupied only by disinterested public actors. 

Now this is not to say that these groups (and those working for them) are anything but informed or otherwise well-meaning—or that they never do good work. 

But their interests are inevitably not that of the public, not guided by the public, and not in service directly (or even primarily!) for the public. Worse, the return on investment that these private groups inevitably seek is paid by DC taxpayers and includes loss of democratic control of public money in publicly funded schools. 

Consider that just this year, the DC charter board used money from Education Forward DC to pay for a Bellwether study. The study was to help the charter board draft a policy on mergers and acquisitions. Notably, that study included feedback from just 16 DC charter schools, almost half of which received money directly from Education Forward DC. Also notably, that study included no parent, teacher, or student feedback. For a sector that loves to tout its diversity, its supporting study was remarkably undiverse and limited—which appeared to be the point, as its conclusions were entirely focused on what was convenient for, and desired by, charter operators. (A member of the public correctly noted that the draft policy treated mergers and acquisitions as mainly financial transactions, with families’ role limited to paying for it with their taxes and their children.)

Education Forward DC has also granted money to a variety of DC charter schools, including several that have recently ceased operation (among them, I Dream, Eagle, and soon Capital Village). For all any of us knows, that private money might have ensured that the charters’ fiscal problems were prolonged. In fact, Eagle Academy provides a helpful window into how this cycle of private wealth’s influence, power, and profit works. 

For years, DC officials overlooked Eagle’s serious fiscal challenges, which allowed the school not only to persist but to expand—and not just in DC but also to Nevada and Ohio. In this manner, private money aided Eagle’s efforts to garner yet more public money. And the more powerful Eagle got by way of its expansions, the more powerful its private funders could appear. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no DC official publicly questioned Eagle’s status until after Eagle’s very public implosion in Nevada. While Eagle in DC no longer exists (nor in Nevada nor in Ohio), it has taken more than a year of private litigation for former staffers in DC to get an agreement for pay they were owed. As far as I know, no private funder has ever said anything about Eagle, and I have no idea if DC ever realized the remaining $1 million that Eagle owed the city. 

Such private money influencing (and ultimately profiting from) DC’s public education sector is all the more worrisome given that no agency in DC seems to be actually tracking philanthropic donations to DC’s publicly funded schools. 

The last this accounting was publicly done by the charter board, for instance, was before 2020. And despite all the heavy breathing about inequitable PTA fundraising in DCPS, there’s a boatload of official silence around donations to the corporate fundraising arm of DCPS, the DC Public Education Fund (supported by $119,000 from Education Forward DC in 2023). 

To be sure, there has been tremendous opacity around publicly available federal grants in both DCPS and charters along with opacity around per pupil facility funding in DC charters. But the fact that large amounts of private money flow copiously into DC’s publicly funded schools every year, without even a glance by anyone charged with oversight, is astonishing—all the more so because the $2 billion that DC taxpayers annually invest in our publicly funded schools is obviously of interest to those investing their own money in our schools.

So it is that literally no one in DC government knows—or apparently much cares—how many personnel, initiatives, and even entire programs and schools are sponsored by these private organizations that require DC taxpayer funding to sustain. In just such a way, some unknown piece of DC taxpayers’ annual $2 billion education pie is reserved for private organizations and their wealthy funders. And perhaps unsurprisingly, DC also doesn’t lack for any number of privately funded organizations that stand up research about the wonders of school privatization and choice (hey there, EmpowerK12! How ya doing, DC Policy Center?). 

So, as DC stands on the cusp of ensuring a few representatives of DC’s private money influence machine in DC’s publicly funded schools get a bigger piece of the action, here are a few new-ish organizations that partake in the private wealth business of influencing DC’s public education:

–ElectedED DC: This organization came about in 2021 and is funded by the City Fund. Its mission statement on its most recent tax filing says it is to “promote the general welfare of the community by improving access to meaningful educational opportunities for all children in the District of Columbia, with a particular focus on ward 7 and 8.”

Sadly, the donors to that mission are unnamed on its tax filing—but the organization is a 501(c)(4), which allows it to endorse candidates. (And surprise! Maura Marino is its treasurer.) 

–Center for Strong Public Schools Action Fund: The former director of DFER DC, Jessica Giles, runs the DC office of this 501(c)(4) group, which endorses candidates along ed-reform lines in various places, including DC. Giles apparently left DFER in a cloud about DFER’s endorsement of education savings accounts—which is more than a little ironic, given the privatizing tilt of education reform for, well, its entire history. Expect more DFER-like influence in DC campaigns.

–DC Kids and Schools: The website of this (new) organization says the following (boldface mine): 

“We have brought together a coalition of funders, schools, researchers, policy and advocacy organizations, to build a collective vision for education in DC and elevate our schools as learning labs both locally and nationally to spur progress in every classroom.”

The only rub is that in a democracy with public education, it’s the public working with their elected and appointed leaders (and not private groups with private funding and private agendas) who are supposed to “build a collective vision for education.” Given the material it features, this organization appears to exist to promote school choice and charters, while touting incredible progress through ed reform in DC. 

Interestingly, the contact number for this group (202-677-9412) is the same as PAVE’s. Turns out, PAVE worked with the DC Public Education Fund; Education Forward DC; and the DC Charter Alliance to create this group—which is also supported by two other DC-based ed reform groups: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the CityBridge Foundation (which launched CityTutor). Oh, and DC Kids and Schools counts among its “coalition members” CitySchools Collaborative, ElectED DC, the Center for Strong Public Schools, a bunch of DC charters, EmpowerK12, and the DC Policy Center. 

(If all that coordination between these organizations is starting to feel a bit, uh, too close for comfort, don’t think it isn’t.)

–Partnership for DC School Excellence: This group started in 2025 with money from the DC Charter School Alliance. It works with three charter schools and EmpowerK12 to, per its director’s December 9 council testimony, “support schools through a structured process of evaluating data, reflecting on what is working, and identifying targeted opportunities for improvement” (see the hearing starting at the 1:55:30 mark of the video here). Extraordinarily, the organization’s director responded to a question at the hearing by noting that the organization is supported in part by “philanthropy” without specifying where that money is coming from—and after having asked in testimony for financial support from the council. To be fair, that director may have felt emboldened asking for public money since the head of the office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE) sits on the organization’s board. 

–Relay Graduate School of Education: One cannot discuss private wealth interests in DC’s publicly funded schools without a brief word about Relay, which is again in the news in DC. This private organization provides instructional programs for teachers in DCPS and other publicly funded schools. Those programs have apparently outlined harshly controlling classroom practices directed mainly at Black students.

In 2020, principals of some DCPS schools (Boone, Kimball, Simon, Burrville) were reportedly fired for refusing to implement Relay programming. In late 2021, two of the fired administrators filed a lawsuit against DC.

Yet since the start of 2024, DC has paid Relay more than $1 million, per the contracts database. Ironically, the instructional superintendent named in the 2021 lawsuit has left DCPS this year, having been found to have unlawfully accepted tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from Relay. And that instructional superintendent is not the only DCPS employee who has been a recipient of Relay’s fiscal, uh, generosity. 

Naturally, Relay has no information about its donors on its latest tax form, although its website makes clear that among the many education privatizers supporting it is—wait for it–Education Forward DC.