They hail from New York, the Silicon Valley, Arkansas, Los Angeles and elsewhere. They are a rich and diverse lot, including Republicans, liberals, Hollywood notables and international corporate executives.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, L.A. philanthropist Eli Broad, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, pomegranate juice titan Lynda Resnick, anti-Obama mega-donor A. Jerrold Perenchio and the widow of Steve Jobs.

Together, they smashed records for spending by outside groups in last month’s L.A. Board of Education elections. These major donors poured about $4 million into the Coalition for School Reform, a political action committee spearheaded by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

On the surface, they have little in common. But this group united in Los Angeles behind education issues that have become national in scope, including the growth of publicly funded charter schools and the use of student test scores in teacher performance evaluations. Most want to reduce job protections for teachers and support the education agenda of the Obama administration. Some even want to limit collective bargaining rights for teachers.

They believed that a successful stand in the L.A. Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school system and a hotbed of unionism, would have a sweeping effect.

The coalition received mixed results: It won one race, lost another and ended up in a runoff in the third.

Critics have questioned the motives of the outside donors, noting their ties to corporate interests. The criticism is fair, but skepticism about their motives is misplaced, said Rick Hess, an education analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, who has not wholly endorsed the donors’ agenda.

Click here for the full story.