Rabbit hole warning. We're going to look at a group that's pushing national vouchers, and it will be a long trip. You've been warned.
The idea is a tax credit scholarship voucher. In this case, an individual could write off 10% of their gross income by giving it to a "scholarship granting organization" aka "voucher management group" aka "extra set of hands so that it doesn't look like the government is giving tax dollars to private religious organizations."
The bill was submitted (who knows who actually wrote it) by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA),a gastroenterologist who at least deserves credit for being one of the seven GOP senators to vote to impeach Trump for the insurrection. He's also the guy who promised that he would only support health care legislation that passed the Jimmy Kimmel Test (and then didn't when he went in with Lindsey Graham to propose an alternative to Obamacare). The bill arrived with 14 co-sponsors and picked up 15 more--the usual GOP crew, from Tuberville to Vance to Blackburn to both Scotts. There's a corresponding House bill filed by Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE-3).
Cassidy tried this last year, too. And the year before that. This year's version dropped during National School Choice Week, and there's supposed to be a PR push to help support it.
That push is supposed to be coming courtesy of the Invest In Education Coalition. So who are they?
Their own explanation is that they are a "501(c)(4) organization that advocates at the federal level for legislation that will directly empower K-12 parents throughout the nation to choose the best school or education service for their children."
The board of directors is just three guys--
Anthony J. de Nicola is the chair. He's also chairman of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a New York private equity form that specializes in tech and healthcare. He and his wife are big on philanthropic giving, including supporting the Catholic church.
Thomas E. McInerny is the secretary of the board. He's CEO at Bluff Point Associates, a private equity firm. He used to be a general partner at Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe.
Robert H. Neihaus is treasurer. He's founder of GCP Capital Partners, a private equity firm.
None of their bios mention any sort of education background. But they have plenty of investment banking credentials.
The website is basically all about the ECCA. You can join the coalition, but it's not really clear who the members, if any, of the coalition are. There's a big list of groups and "leaders" that support the ECCA, and perhaps that makes them part of this group? The supporters list includes no surprises, from Betsy DeVos to Dr. Corey DeAngelis, plus national and state groups. There are links to "research" from DeVos's American Federation for Children and Milton Friedman's EdChoice. There are empty pages (like the /team page). Their LinkedIn page is just an auto-placeholder. We'll get back to their Facebook page in a minute.
The Wayback Machine internet archive shows a different picture of the team. The earliest capture of the team page is from May 21, 2022, and back then there were four more members of the leadership team and a slightly different name-- Invest in Education Foundation.
The additional three board members are: Robert Flanigan, co-founder of Educate, LLC (where he's apparently just a "co-owner" since 2019) and former Merrill Lynch guy; Susan B. George of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund and the Catholic Education Advancement Office of the Archdiocese of New York; and Darla Romfo, president of the Children's Scholarship Fund, an outfit that provides "partial scholarships for low-income children in grades K-8 to go to private school," which sounds like voucher administration work.
Back then, IIEF had a president-- Luke Messer. Messer was the CEO of School Choice Indiana. He was also elected a state legislator (2003-2006) then moved on to a US Rep from 2013-2019 (in the district Mike Pence vacated to become Governor), where he was founder and co-chair of the Congressional School Choice Caucus. He made plenty of choicer friends in the days after Trump's election and DeVos's appointment.
By May of 2022, he was a partner at the law firm of Bose McKinney & Evans. At Invest in Education, he worked "every day to enact a $10 billion federal tax credit that would help give millions of children access to a high-quality school." By June of 2023, IIEF's address was the same as that of Bose McKinney & Evans, and the site was sporting logos for both a foundation and a coalition. One thing Messer doesn't list in his bio is his years as a registered lobbyist (2006-2012), right after he tried to privatize some Indiana highways. And he's been out there as the face of Invest in Education stumping for choice on all the usual fun places.
It sure looks like the whole business is Messer's show.
Then, by December of 2023, Messer is gone from the Team page, and Invest in Education has no address. And by today, Invest in Education has a new logo, and only three board members.
Huh.
But there's another rabbit hole to dice down. Invest in Education has a Facebook page, and that page, with the exception of a slow period from late 2020-2021, has been active almost daily since it was set up. That set-up happened on September 11, 2017-- only it was started at the page for My Kids Future (a few weeks later, someone changed the name to My Kid's Future).
My Kid's Future was yet another pro-choice website, a "special project of the #EdTaxCredit50 and Invest in Education coalitions." Weirdly enough, the English language version of the website is down, but the Spanish language one is up. Edtaxcredit50 has its own dormant Facebook page, launched on April 20, 2017. They set up a Twitter account at the same time and crumped out around late 2021. Invest in Education also had a Twitter account that started in October of 2013 as @OpportunityInEd, another account that joined in May 2009 and is still kicking, and there's also @Investined, which is a suspended account. All of their social media has followed the standard pandemic outrage-learning loss panic narrative.
Amidst all that, we learn that Invest In Ed had a previous president-- Tom Carroll. Thomas W. Carroll left IIE to get busy in the world of Catholic private schools; he just last summer announced he'll be stepping down as the superintendent of Boston archdiocesan schools at the end of this school year. He started there in April 2019.
Carroll's LinkedIn says that he presided over Invest in Education Coalition and Foundation from March 2012 to March 2019, calling it "A think tank and advocacy organization focused on school choice in NY and nationally." He also says he founded #EdTaxCredit50 Coalition in January of 2017, which focused on pushing a 50-state tax credit and "the expansion of 529 college savings accounts in December 2017 to allow withdrawals for private K-12 tuition, the biggest federal school-choice initiative ever adopted."
Prior to his time at IIE, Carroll spent 2002-2012 as president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, a New York State choice advocacy group, and before that, founder and chairman of the Brighter Choice Foundation, a charter network in and around Albany. Though he doesn't mention it, a listing for Carroll at the Center for Education Reform also says that post-FERA, he headed up the Foundation for Opportunity in Education, which fits.
Carroll's 2012 arrival at Invest in Education aligns with the group's certification by the IRS. The Foundation was granted tax exempt status in 2012, and the Coalition in 2013. Both list an Albany post office box as their address, both list Anthony De Nicola (the current chair) as the principal officer.
The 990 for the foundation from 2022 gives us yet another name, the only guy besides Messer who is listed as putting in 40 hour weeks. That's Michael J. Strianese, who was the CFO and COO for Invest in Ed, according to his LinkedIn from 2012-2018, then moved on to be CFO and COO for Northeast Charter Schools Network in Albany from 2019 on, so why he's on this 990 is unclear. Messer made $115,000 for his presidential duties; Strianese, $60K. On 2020, Messer is not on the form, and Strianese made $38,000.
And in 2021. we find Maureen Blum, in her single 990 appearance as Executive Director. Her LinkedIn page says she was ED with IIEC for six years (2016-2022), and she says that IIEC was a continuation of Coalition for Opportunity in Education "due to a name change of company." She started out with the Coalition for Opportunity in Education in 2012 and served as Director of Outreach till the apparent name change in January of 2016. And before that she was with Brighter Choice since 2003 as director of outreach. She was also the ED of #EdTaxCredit50/USA Workforce Coalition from April 2016 through January 2022. Also, from 2002 till the present, she has been CEO of Strategic Coalitions and Initiatives, LLC, specializing in the "development of grassroots and community infrastructure designed to support and implement--" you know what? She's a professional astroturfer.
The 2022 Foundation 990 also answers "Yes" to "Did the organization make any significant changes to its governing documents since the prior Form 990 was filed?" That turns out to be changes to the bylaws to "limit and control the board selection and removal process, and also to modify the process for hiring and firing the CEO and direct reports of the CEO" which seems like a bit of a clue about what happened to Messer and half the board.
The Foundation took in gifts, grants and contributions totaling almost $3 million over five years; about half of that came in 2018. The low point was 2020 with $179K, but in 2022 they brought in $746K. Digging back, we a measly $155K in 2016, but almost a million in 2017.
The 2022 990 for the Coalition shows Strianese and the three remaining board members, but not Messer. The group spent money on Bose Public Affairs Group in DC ($253K for lobbying) and in Indianapolis ($147K for lobbying), plus Linden-Grove Strategies in Albany ($127K for media and advocacy). 2021 shows those four plus Blum. 2020 shows just the three. The coalition shows much more revenue, topping a million each year.
So what have we got here? An organization that has been around in various forms for a decade or so, agitating for national vouchers, and since the pandemic, they've been hitting all the usual choicer notes on Facebook through an account that somebody is running for them. They cut loose a bunch of members (perhaps shedding the foundation and just downsizing to the coalition). They look kind of amateur hour, but somebody is feeding them a lot of money.
We started this with an announcement about their intent to boost ECCA. So what have they done?
Well, they have a Youtube channel with four videos. Two are from last fall, arguing for the ECCA with the usual rhetoric about failing schools and Evil People leaving students behind (pictures of Weingarten and Fauci), calling for every GOP candidate to embrace the message (series of now-irrelevant images), and offering the not-quite-true talking point that this doesn't use federal dollars (no, it just uses dollars that leave a hole in the federal revenue). Another spot links school choice to Ronald Reagan. And two more tell the story of a young woman who was saved by school choice; it does not address the question of how many private schools would refuse to honor her voucher because of her learning struggles or lack of born-again parents. You can go watch them if you must, but there's not much traffic over there and that seems like a good thing.
So.
If somewhere in your neighborhood, advertisement about the Education Choice for Children Act being paid for by the Invest in Education Coalition, know you kind of know what that's about. I'm sorry this didn't end up being a more linear, straightforward tale, but that is rather the nature of these groups--twisty and inbred with ever-shifting names and connections, because they're just mechanisms created by rich people to work their will and sell their preferred policy. These are not "organizations" in a normal sense, but just tools created for a particular purpose. In this case, the purpose is to push national school choice, a policy that has failed and failed and failed again, but hey--these folks are patient and wealthy enough to wait and keep tap, tap, tapping on the obstacles until they crumble.
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