‘Dark Money’ comes for the Boston Public Schools

A poster by Next Chapter Boston, a nonprofit group that says Boston Public Schools aren't doing enough to educate students, was displayed on a Red Line train Wednesday night.Marcela Rodrigues / Globe staff

The image is innocent enough to tug at anyone’s heartstrings: a child staring with the dramatic caption: “BPS is failing her.”

That’s the advertisement attacking Boston Public Schools that briefly greeted riders on the Red and Orange Lines this week. The T’s management removed the ads after inquiries from the Globe, calling them a violation of the agency’s guidelines for advertising.

They are the work of a newly launched nonprofit called Next Chapter Boston. The education advocacy group claims its mission is to bring awareness to what it says is the sorry plight of the city’s public schools.

The group’s leaders — among them former School Committee member Mary Tamer and education activist Vernee Wilkinson — have zeroed in on lagging test scores to make the argument that nobody is paying enough attention to the disgrace staring us in the face.

“I don’t think there’s general awareness of that, at least not that people are attending to in an urgent way,” Wilkinson told me. She said the group’s aim is to spur more grassroots involvement in working on the schools.

That all sounds lovely, but there’s something about this group I find deeply unsettling. Though it is well-funded enough to afford a $1.5 million ad campaign, its leaders won’t identify most of the people bankrolling this effort.

A couple of donors have been identified, including venture capitalist Rick Burnes and philanthropist Michael Champa.

But many others have opted to go anonymous. Wilkinson and others claim those donors don’t want the inconvenience of public attention, a claim I find utterly ridiculous.

Here’s why: People who suddenly pour big money into something like that aren’t just trying to “raise awareness” — whatever that really means. They are trying to influence public policy. And the public has a right to know who they are, and what they really want.

Do they want more high-stakes testing? More charter schools? A new superintendent? A new mayor?

There’s no way to know any of that from an anonymously-funded ad campaign and a website.

For years, education policy in particular has been rife with big-money actors seeking to shape policy without public accountability. Some of them have pushed for vouchers, or charter schools, or other forms of defunding public schools.

And many hide behind a seemingly benign plea to “please think of the children.”

But these deep-pocketed, behind-the-scenes activists know how to avoid the hassle of actually dealing with public scrutiny. That’s the job of the staffs they hire, not the rich guys themselves.

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, has been tracking and writing about the presence of “dark money” in public education for years.

This ad, he told me Friday, gives him great concern.

“It’s as undemocratic as anything I can think of,” Cunningham said.

“This is dark money in action. It’s permeated public policy, with the richest people in America hiding behind these organizations, and I think it’s bad for democracy.”

He noted that Next Chapter Boston will have to file a publicly available tax return, but not until late 2027. And even then, they won’t have to cough up the identities of their donors.

Wilkinson claims it is a big secret — that’s how she put it — that a city like Boston has underperforming public schools. I think it’s much more accurate to say it’s at odds with the image people around the country have of Boston, a place so closely identified with brainpower and name-brand universities.

And, it’s not a secret at all to daily riders of the Red Line or the Orange Line.

There’s a legitimate argument to be made there isn’t enough pressure to improve the schools, that more involvement might help move the needle faster. Nobody’s arguing against more activism, or defending mediocre (or worse) school performance.

But glossy ads and slick websites that hide more than they reveal won’t make this system better. Billionaires who don’t think we need to know what their agenda is aren’t going to fix the BPS.

Like so many would-be activists, they say they want a conversation. But that conversation had to begin with a basic commitment to transparency.

Tell us who you are, and what you want. Maybe then we can start talking about a “next chapter’ for our schools.