Maurice Cunningham, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, is an expert on the infusion of Dark Money into education.
He wrote several articles about the millions of dollars that poured into Massachusetts to promote the referendum to increase the number of charter schools in November 2016.
This article is about a Dark Money passthrough called Stand for Children, which began its life as a pro-public school group but turned into a pro-Privatization, anti-union, anti-teacher organization. It highlights the role of Stand for Children in Massachusetts. It does not explore its national activities, where it plays a pernicious part in the attack on public schools, unions, and teachers.
Those who remember the early days of SFC now call it “Stand ON Children.”
It has funneled money to corporate reform candidates in cities from Nashville to Denver. It tried to squelch the Chicago Teachers Union by buying up all the top lobbyists in Illinois. It has funded anti-union, anti-teacher campaigns.
It pretends to be a “civil rights” organization. It is not.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Illinois public school kids really got robbed by ed reformers. They’re not going to get anything out of that “school funding and voucher bill” they passed.
They’ll never see the public school money but the voucher funding is guaranteed.
SUCH a bad deal for public school families.
Chiara,
How do these people sleep at night?
Like the title of the great Akira Kurosawa movie: “The Bad Sleep Well”
You’re not kidding, Chiara. In fact, the ORIGINAL bill–SB 1–which was proudly & overwhelmingly passed (& pushed–by Dems, no less–sponsored by a Dem who has stated that sp.ed. kids are over-identified)–was a lousy bill–“Fix the Formula,” equalize funding. Yeah, right. Pushed by Advance ILL-Annoy (read older CAN posts in this blog–a pro-privatization ) & ILL-Annoy Stand on Children (who, however, did not put their name on any of the literature–Advance took care of that), this bill was passed w/the knowledge there is no new revenue in ILL-Annoy (we still have a flat tax), but many school programs were cut (& exactly how does THAT help public school kids?), especially a dedicated $9 K for sp.ed. personnel. And then–the final stab to the public schools–the “tax scholarships” (fancy words for–vouchers).
And–adding injury to injury–just heard that 17 charter schools would be opening in Chicago. And…on to the rest of the state.
Do our young learn about propaganda techniques these DAZE?
It is obvious that many adults have no clue about propaganda techniques being used on them day in and day out.
Stand for Children is NOT STANDING for Children. This is about paletering (using propaganda) to rake in money. Sad and sick.
Pandering?
YES, PANDERING. THANK-YOU, Diane.
It doesn’t seem so at my daughter’s middle school. But I educate her. She knows exactly why I went to protest DeVos when she spoke at Harvard. I wanted her to come with me, but she was too scared after seeing what happened in Charlottesville. She begged me not to go.
Howard Zinn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmVdb123XvA
This is good.
Stand on Children in WA is behind several PACs that all pushed charter schools as well as campaigning against certain anti-charter legislators & the Supreme Court Justices who declared charter schools unconstitutional & not eligible for public school $$. They morph into a new PAC each season, pretending to be progressive ed reform rather than pro-privatization ed deform groups. They work in cahoots with hideous groups like WPC, which was responsible for bringing Betsy “Cruella DeVille” into our state a couple of weeks ago.