Groups: The (Meaningless?) Rise Of The Alliance & The Forum

It's interesting to note the rise of at least two education organizations, even in tight financial times and despite the clutter of groups already out there. 

One is the Alliance For Excellent Education, which seemed not to have much of a focus or role at first. (For a long time I thought of it as just another one of Susan Frost's side projects.)  Now, eight years in, All4Ed inserts itself in every secondary education debate out there (see org history here).  

The other is the Forum for Education and Democracy.  For a while it seemed like the conveners couldn't agree on anything and the result was Beltway invisibility.  More recently they hired a national director (Sam Chaltain) and hired PR maven Susan Oliver to get the message out.  

I still don't really know what these groups do, if and how they're different from other overlapping groups, or whether they can be said to improve the overall quality of what gets done in the name of education reform. I'm guessing their impact is marginal at best,or perhaps just offsets the decline of other, more established groups (Committee on Education Funding, Chiefs, etc).  But it seems clear that these two have arrived, by some vague measure.