Maurice Cunningham, a professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, is renowned for his practice of “following the money” in Massachusetts. He naturally keeps encountering the Walton money that flows generously to torpedo public spending for public schools in Massachusetts. Maurice Cunningham is one of the heroes in my forthcoming book SLAYING GOLIATH.
In this post, he identifies the malign tentacles of Walton money that is currently engaged in trying to block legislation to increase the funding of public schools in the Bay State.
You can’t tell the players without a scorecard, and Cunningham provides the scorecard. The name of the organization is less important than the source of the money. If you spot a group called Latinos for Education, remember they are a Walton front.
When you think of the name Walton, think of a family that has accumulated over $150 billion but abhors unions, detests the minimum wage, and likes to keep their workers underpaid and tightly controlled. And think of a family that is intent on destroying the public schools that 85% of American children attend. How would you describe them? Avaricious. Greedy. Selfish.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I was reading a NYT article about popular uprisings and a pattern that seems to be developing against the concentration of wealth in a small elite class. It has lead to misplaced nationalistic bombast In some places and popular uprisings in the street in others. Who knows, maybe people getting bamboozled by Trump was a necessary step toward a more equitable division of resources. It is ironic that a man devoted to his own comfort in a slavish lifestyle should end up as a leader purportedly devoted to emptying the swamp. Now if we can take the chutzpah of the young progressives and the political acumen of the old guard and combine them…. I want AOC and Pelosi to be best friends.
the one adage I think of often these days, trying hard to feel some optimism, is “That which doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger…”
Is this blog, woke?
Spedutkr’s “uprisings” are reaction to a more encompassing threat than just the
profit taking of the rich. The resistance is against the overarching plot for political, authoritarian control. The right wing uses a playbook internationally that was, unfortunately, not understood until 3 years after Trump’s election.
Extracts from media’s recent awakening-
“In Belgium, the Flemish National Party has made a name for itself by defending “abandoned” institutions such as the Catholic school system.” IMO, Fordham and Manhattan Institute (linked to Koch’s) write in a similar vein about saving Catholic schools.
“Religious citizens are drawn to rhetoric of authoritarian leaders.” The examples listed included Hungary’s Orban (allied with Kremlin positions), Brazil’s Bolsonaro, India’s Narenda Modi (Tulsi Gabbard’s relationship to Modi led to recent questions about her
positioning as the right or left), Italy’s Salvini, France’s LePen, and Gert Wilders.
“American Christian conservatives have actively supported Orban”. Orban shut down the Soros-funded university in Hungary. (Hungary is 40% Catholic.)
Napa Institute (Catholic) asked for donors to support the Ukrainian Catholic University. The school was founded with money from Dimitry Firtash, an oligarch with positions allied with Putin and with ties to Trump. Ukraine borders Hungary.
“The (European) populist right is forging an unholy alliance with religion…large sums of government money is showered on churches.” In the U.S., it appears that most of the millions in voucher money fund Catholics schools. At least one city paper journalist identified the high percentage of voucher money relative to parish revenues.
“Ethno-nationalists hijack religious themes to fuel their agendas.” Orban is listed as example.
Orban proposed that “women with 4 children never pay a cent in taxes for the rest of their lives.” The info is from the American website, CatholicVote, which posted, “Hungary’s Orban Champions Marriage and Family”. The article ends with a question whether Orban’s proposals would work in the U.S.
Does the hierarchy of the major religion in Boston support or undermine public education?
Diane: “In this post, he identifies the malign tentacles of Walton money that is currently engaged in trying to block legislation to increase the funding of public schools in the Bay State.”
Where precisely is your evidence of these purported “efforts to block legislation to increase the funding of schools”?
As per this story:
https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/10/massachusetts-house-passes-15-billion-education-funding-bill-setting-up-showdown-with-senate-over-accountability.html
“The initial bill released by the Education Committee enjoyed broad support from a variety of interest groups.”
[…]
“But when the Senate passed its version of the bill, senators made changes that many reform groups panned as significantly weakening districts’ accountability for how they spend the new money.”
The House then, by vote of 155-0, passed a version that maintained the funding and “restored the language that was in the original bill, giving state officials more authority.”
Now it’ll go to conference committee. There’s no evidence whatsoever that I have seen anywhere of Walton-funded groups blocking the greatly increased state funding for schools. But perhaps I missed it.
Ask Professor Cunningham. I have found him to be a careful researcher.
The House and Senate versions don’t differ in respect to funding levels, they differ in respect to the degree to which there’d be state oversight/influence over the expenditure of the state funds.
DFER and the groups Cunningham cites as receiving Walton funding have favored the House version. The MTA has favored the version with the Senate amendment. If DFER et al opposing the Senate amendment is properly characterized as blocking legislation to increase the funding of public schools then it would be equally true to assert that the MTA’s opposition to the House version stripped of the Senate amendment also constitutes blocking legislation to increase the funding of public schools.
I would find neither of those to be an appropriate way to frame the reality.
If the Prof disagrees with that, I’d be interested to know. Wouldn’t be the first time we’d disagreed: https://haveyouheardblog.com/family-affair/
The Waltons, who donate generously to Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker’s former organization, the Pioneer Institute, are alarmed that they lost on the 2016 ballot question to explode the cap on charters. Since then, they’ve have striven mightly to find a back door to undermine funding and democratic governance of our public schools.
The Pioneers have floated the proposal that poor cities which receive funds from the state for education should lose their elected school board members to ones appointed by the state board of education, which itself is appointed by the governor and has 3 Walton linked members.
“Baker has proposed giving the education commissioner additional authority to implement plans to turn around struggling districts.
“The reforms proposed by the Pioneer Institute envision far broader authority by the state — such as letting the state appoint a majority of school board members in a district where it provides a majority of funding or reestablishing an independent agency to audit local school districts. The institute wants to provide more money to programs that promote school choice, such as funding charter school reimbursement, paying for vocational schools and expanding METCO, which lets urban students attend suburban schools. It wants to give the state authority to intervene earlier in struggling schools.
” ”The fact is states are putting an enormous amount of money into K-12 reforms, they should have a commensurate amount of leverage,’ said Jamie Gass, the Pioneer Institute’s director of the Center for School Reform and one of the report’s authors.”
https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/07/pioneer-institute-study-calls-for-more-education-reform-accountability.html
During yesterday’s process, elected officials from these cities were condescendingly compared to teenagers run amok with the family car:
“Rep. Joseph Wagner, speaking in opposition to Hawkins’ amendment, compared the state’s role as an entity that provides resources for education to his providing the car that his teenage children drive. He said that in the same way he expects his kids to adhere to a curfew when out in the car, the commissioner should expect accountability from districts.”
https://www.tauntongazette.com/news/20191024/house-votes-sets-up-talks-on-final-education-spending-bill
Massachusetts highest needs kids are concentrated in the so-called Gateway cities, whose tax base is unable to provide sufficient revenue to fully fund the public schools, especially when charters consume their funding. The Foundation Budget Review Commission found in 2015 that there was systemic underfunding of heath insurance, special education, English language learners and kids in poverty. Last legislative session, the attempt to pass this bill stalled when Baker’s acolyte, Rep. Alice Peisch of Wellesley, refused to equitably fund the last two groups. But since folks aren’t having it, Baker, the Pioneers and the Waltons tried for this Hail Mary pass. So far, no touchdown.
Full funding means that fewer schools will be denoted as “failing”and make state takeovers less likely, depriving charters of their market of poor black and brown kids. It’s why Professor Cunningham writes:
“Thus the problem facing the Waltons is not that the Massachusetts senate bill won’t work, but that it will.”
In a roundabout way, public education advocates owe the Waltons a debt of gratitude. We got organized, though way outspent by the billionaires dark money, educated citizens about the value of public education and even turned around our senator, Elizabeth Warren, on charter schools.
Some apostrophes have gone missing:
*Massachusetts’ highest needs kids
*the billionaires’ dark money
I am willing to bet that no one on the MASS board of elementary and secondary education has ever turned around a school or a district, and has no idea what to do. But they can find snake oil salesmen to charge millions to pledge to try.
They took over two Boston Schools, then returned control of them, unchanged, to the city.
They claim success in Lawrence, whose city government was totally corrupt, but omit that some $5 million was funneled into the schools in years 2 and 3 of the takeover. (That receiver is the current Commissioner.)
They claim that the Springfield Empowerment Zone (a brainstorm of education gadfly Chris Gabrieli, who has managed to start three non-profits which drain money from our schools) has the magic sauce, but nothing was done in Springfield that couldn’t have happened in cooperation with the teachers unions there.
Batting 0 for 3.
C.L.: “They took over two Boston Schools, then returned control of them, unchanged, to the city.”
Are these the two schools to which you’re alluding?
1) “At one time, Orchard Gardens was one of the five worst schools in all of Massachusetts.”
[…]
“Three years later, there’s no doubt Orchard Gardens has changed.
But it’s time to ask the question about results. Today, in a political climate where schools are measured by performance numbers, Orchard Gardens still has a long way to go. The school’s Spring 2012 MCAS proficiency levels still lag significantly behind state averages in every category and grade.
“But if you look at another set of numbers, Orchard Gardens shines. It’s in the top 2 percent of Boston public schools in terms of the rate of student improvement.”
“The Remarkable Turnaround Of The Orchard Gardens School”
https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2013/06/06/orchard-gardens
2) “the 500-student Jeremiah E. Burke High School continues to see dramatic academic improvements, including more than doubling the rates of student proficiency in math and English Language Arts, in the face of what at one time seemed like insurmountable odds.”
“To Turn A School Around, Put Students At The Center”
https://www.wbur.org/edify/2016/12/02/commentary-burke-school-turnaround
And also in respect to the city of Lawrence, I think Diane may underestimate the state board’s capacity to impel positive changes. See:
“How did Lawrence, Mass., turn its schools around? Cooperation.”
https://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2017/0206/How-did-Lawrence-Mass.-turn-i
The link is dead.
oops. sorry:
https://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2017/0206/How-did-Lawrence-Mass.-turn-its-schools-around-Cooperation
English High and the Paul A. Dever Elementary.
At the Dever, the very first thing the state did was eliminate the bilingual program. All linguistic research demonstrates kids are more fluent language learners when supported in their home language as they transition to literacy. That’s because the state board runs on ideology, not research.
C.L. “English High and the Paul A. Dever Elementary.”
In re: Boston English it’s my impression that that turnaround effort was devised and implemented by the local school district, not by the state authorities. Struggled for quite a while in that process…
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/the-download/243-school-turnaround-failure/
But some more recent signs of progress:
https://www.wbur.org/edify/2017/04/10/english-high-turnaround
And control of the Dever hasn’t been returned to the District has it? Although District Superintendent Tommy Chang was the state-appointed Receiver for a while. That role was given by the state commissioner in August 2018 to Michael Contompasis, former headmaster for more than 20 years of Boston Latin. Seems to me like a very capable chap, who continues to lead that effort.
So Stephen, you share the Deformers’ view that democracy is the biggest obstacle to fixing schools and the state department of education knows how to do it.
Diane: “So Stephen, you share the Deformers’ view that democracy is the biggest obstacle to fixing schools and the state department of education knows how to do it.”
I do not maintain a shrine where I light candles in memory of Pixie Palladino and Louise Day Hicks, if that’s what you mean.
Your own enthusiasm for democracy falls short of understanding and accepting this?
“More voters in Boston go to the polls to vote for mayor than any other elected position, so far more voters hold the BPS accountable by voting for mayor than those who would vote for school committee members and a system of divided accountability.”
“In 1996, the voters of Boston resoundingly chose by a 70-30 percent vote to retain the current seven-member appointed structure. On Question 2, a binding question on the Nov. 4, 1996 ballot, the appointed School Committee won by a plurality of 59,458 votes and carried 20 of Boston’s 22 wards.”
https://www.dotnews.com/columns/2018/case-sticking-appointed-school-committee-setup-boston
In 2016, the voters of the state of Massachusetts voted by a margin of 62-38 percent NOT to increase the number of charter schools.
You refuse to accept their decision, and so do the Waltons, who continue to pour millions into phony parent groups to advocate for privatization of public schools.
Diane: “In 2016, the voters of the state of Massachusetts voted by a margin of 62-38 percent NOT to increase the number of charter schools. You refuse to accept their decision”
In 1988, the voters of the state of Massachusetts voted by a margin of 71-29 percent NOT to establish standards for the humane treatment of farm animals.
In 2016, the voters of the state of Massachusetts voted by a margin of 78-22 percent TO ESTABLISH standards for the humane treatment of farm animals.
I was involved in both of the latter efforts. We persisted.
You are on the wrong side of history, Stephen, along with the Waltons and the Koch brother and DeVos and ALEC.
I’m really curious, Stephen, as to your role in public education in Boston and Massachusetts. Sounds like a lot of inside ball – the kind that comes from sitting in meetings in well appointed offices, not the kind that comes from being a public school graduate, public school teacher or public school parent in a system like Boston, Chicopee, New Bedford, Holyoke or Lawrence.
Christine L.: “I’m really curious, Stephen, as to your role in public education in Boston and Massachusetts. Sounds like a lot of inside ball – the kind that comes from sitting in meetings in well appointed offices…”
I vaguely recall that you and I may both have participated in some of the same small gatherings organized by Mass Teachers Association staff discussing education policy in the fall of 2015 on the first floor at the Bolling Building. Yes?
In any event, looking forward, in case you’re interested, tomorrow evening at Boston English H.S. there’ll be a forum for all the at-large city council candidates organized by Democratic ward committees 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 19, & 20. Tanisha Sullivan, president of the NAACP Boston branch will moderate, and will devise and deliver a question on education policy in Boston. We’d be glad to have additional volunteers to help with setup, etc., if you’re available around 4:30 or 5:00.
As for well appointed rooms, on Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m. I’ll aim to be on the third floor of the Boston Foundation (75 Arlington Street), where BPS superintendent Brenda Casselius, former state sec’y of education, Paul Reville, City Council President Andrea Campbell and others will be discussing Campbell’s “Action for Boston Children: A plan for BPS’s Future”. Campbell held a series of open meetings at City Hall, with a diverse variety of participants, as that plan was prepared.
Open ballpark. Free admission. You’re welcome to attend.
Stephen, you’ve neatly sidestepped the question I asked – what is your role in public education in Boston and MA. Who is “we”?
“We’d be glad to have additional volunteers to help with setup, etc., if you’re available around 4:30 or 5:00.”
As for a panel with The Boston Foundation, Paul Reville, and Andrea Campbell, yeah no; these are not my peeps.
The Boston Foundation are major privatizers, contributing at the $100,000 or more level to EdVestors, and working for more than 20 years to undermine the resources and governance of Boston’s Public Schools, most recently by being instrumental in the hiring of the entirely unqualified Laura Periile as our last superintendent.
Here’s Paul Reville’s bio from Bellwether:https://bellwethereducation.org/staff/paul-reville
“Paul Reville is a Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education after having completed nearly five years of service as the Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As Governor Patrick’s top education advisor, Reville established the Executive Office of Education and had oversight of higher education, K-12 and early education in the nation’s leading student achievement state. He served in the Governor’s Cabinet and played a leading education reform role on matters ranging from the Achievement Gap Act of 2010 and Common Core State Standards to the Commonwealth’s highly successful Race to the Top proposal.
Prior to joining the Patrick Administration, Reville had chaired the Massachusetts State Board of Education, founded the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy, co-founded the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE), chaired the Massachusetts Reform Review Commission, chaired the Massachusetts Commission on Time and Learning and served as executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, a national “think tank” which convened the U.S.’s leading researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to set the national standards agenda. Reville played a central role in MBAE’s development of and advocacy for Massachusetts historic “Education Reform Act of 1993.” Reville has been a member of the HGSE faculty since 1997 and has served as Director of the Education Policy and Management Program.”
Just last week MABE was lobbying against fair funding under the Student Opportunity Act.
Bellwether works with the multiple 50CAN organizations, as well as Jeff Bezos, ChanZuckerberg,a variety of charters including KIPP and Gülen’s Harmony schools, the Broads, the Albertsons, Laura and John Arnold, Gates, and hey! the Rhode Island Department of Education. Then there’s the interlocking circles of privatizers in the Boston area.
https://bellwethereducation.org/who-we-work
Bellwether is also working with an affiliate to undermine teachers pensions.
https://www.teacherpensions.org
Andrea Campbell, who was elected to office with funds from DFER has an “Action for Boston Children: A plan for BPS’s Future”.
Not my jam. Pass.
I don’t understand Stephen. He’s a very intelligent man, who comes to this blog only to boast about charters and privatization. Why doesn’t he understand that his views belong at the 74 or one of the other privatization sites. He wastes his breath here.
Perhaps he’s the designated evangelist?
He’s certainly wasting his time here, as most folks on your blog think for themselves.
Christine L.: “Who is ‘we’?
“’We’d be glad to have additional volunteers’”
The event’s organizers… members of Boston’s ward 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 19, & 20 Democratic Party committees, representing Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Roslindale, Roxbury, South End and West Roxbury.
No more, Stephen. Have a personal conversation elsewhere in the future.
Stephen, any info about where the diocese stands on the issue of privatization and tax money for their schools? Consistent with Steve Bannon’s agenda?
Linda: “Stephen, any info about where the diocese stands on the issue of privatization and tax money for their schools? Consistent with Steve Bannon’s agenda?”
Massachusetts has had some of the lengthiest and strictest prohibitions anywhere in the USA on expenditures of public monies for private/religious schools. We preceded, and provided a model for, Congressman Blaine’s attempt to similarly amend the U.S. constitution in 1875.
See pp. 52-53 here:
Click to access 50-state-SC-report-2016-web.pdf
Perhaps for such reason, I haven’t heard a peep from the archdiocese about vouchers/tax credits in recent times. Not that I follow their pronouncements religiously. Though I do confess to having attended a Matignon vs. Cathedral/Cristo Rey (combined squad) girls’ soccer game earlier this week.
Ah, Stephen. Still pining for more charter schools in Massachusetts even though the public rejected them.
Steven-
Thanks for the reply. The “we” is the Koch’s ALEC? It can be deduced from a Manhattan Institute post that Catholic schools are favored over charters (the Biblical “rod” of disciple as argument).
If operatives can get votes from a religious block, they do. This year, Gates-funded Bellwether advised reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their goals in the south.
Cristo Rey received $12,000,000 from Gates. Their prototype in San Jose has 60 students in a classroom with one teacher (1 coach,1 tutor)? Cristo Rey purchases Common Core materials and uses computerized instruction? The students, as an indenture for education, file and enter data for companies 5 days a month and their pay is given back to the school?
Two systems- Catholic schools for the poor and Catholic schools for the rich similar to colonialism? Prosperity Catholics, Charles Koch, ALEC- social Darwinists.
The company we keep…
Kenneth Fisher currently in the news for racist and misogynistic comments gave $2 mil. to the campaign to defeat the re-election of Washington state judges who had rendered verdicts favorable to public schools.
Ireland when 1,000,000 Irish died of starvation had a ruling class like ALEC.
I hope you fail in the U.S.
Steve Ronan is a junior and Leonard Leo is a senior pawn in the Koch kingdom where Bill Gates is queen. The peasants will easily find
the hired henchmen at the bottom and their fate will be indistinguishable from the fate of those better hidden.
33 years until the ruling class owns all American wealth- the reality that dooms them.
Koch condescension-
Citing Blaine while knowing the legal teams of Napa Institute and Liberty are chomping at the bit to defeat separation of church and state and the judges of Leonard Leo are in place.
It’s up at Oped https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Massachusetts-Waltons-Spe-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education-Funding_Educational-Crisis_Public-Education-191025-337.html#comment748289
Massachusetts is screwed.
The Mass. Board of Elementary and Secondary Ed has 12 members. The state must not have Black people and fewer than average women. Of the 12, here’s a summary of the bio’s – one from New Schools Venture Fund and Pioneer Institute, one from Pahara, one a graduate of the Koch’s Catholic University of America, one a grad of Gates’ Harvard, one a grad of Bloomberg’s Johns Hopkins, one with Goldman Sachs credentials and one with a long history in private equity.
Not to worry. They all know how to “fix” schools and districts in distress. They must have imbibed this deep knowledge with their mothers’ milk.
They know oligarchy, theft of the common good and social Darwinism.
They are appointed by the Republican governor, Charlie Baker, who plays a nice guy on TV, but fundraises for Trump at night.
One who recently stepped down, Margaret McKenna was president of Lesley University, well respected for its early childhood education programs. McKenna’s sideline, though, was serving as the president of the Walton Foundation, 2007-2011.
The school choice campaign is cannibalization of the poor and workers’ children. Concentrated wealth dried up other revenue sources for Wall Street.
I noted that it was a block of extremely rich that was seeking to destroy public education – the Waltons, the DeVos family, and the Kochs among them. I asked myself WHY? Looking at some of the conservative communications, I learned that they feel that public institutions teach students to be liberal. After looking at several articles, I concluded that what they want is to eventually control the curriculum, what students are taught. If you look at the types of school that they idealize, you will see what they are eventually hoping for. Their own definition of “Christian Faith”, blind patriotism, and to be grateful to those in charge- grateful for a job without questioning what those in power demand or are doing. I don’t think they want critical thinking to be taught. People who will not question anything they are told by their “superiors”.
First they had to diminish the public’s love for their public schools. It took several decades, but they have managed to get the public to be ashamed of and distrust their public schools. They were able to show that private schools did better ( not mentioning that those schools did not work with similar students)
Now they are willing to support ANY charter or alternative school just to get the money funneled from public schools, even if it is eventually wasted. Once they have shut down the public schools and have all charter and private schools, the private schools will not have to be subjected to the hated regulations that were imposed upon the public schools – desegregation, Title I, etc. The private schools can stop working with a segment of the population.
Already they are demanding that private schools not be subject to the same testing, etc. as the public schools. They don’t feel private schools should have to answer to anyone but the parents and should not have do demonstrate accountability. The parents, of course, who don’t like the schools, will be invited to leave.
As they privatize the schools and offer public money for vouchers, they are lowering taxes…eventually there will not be enough tax money to cover the vouchers. Parents would be told that the tax sheltered money they put aside for education should be used to pay for education. Those who weren’t wise enough or didn’t have enough to put money aside…., well, that’s their problem. (kind of like what some of them said about people who couldn’t afford health insurance – if you want it, you should work hard enough to be able to afford it)
The Kochs long ago in their libertarian platform proposed that education not be mandatory. They could work to get rid of mandatory education. Then it would be up to parents whether to send their children to school or not. Then, when funding is pulled, many poorer parents will be forced to keep their children home for lack of ability to pay for education.
I’m sure that the then elite, controlled private schools would have scholarships for those they deemed “deserving”, but a growing section of the country would go without.
This is a highly condensed scenario, but we definitely should be considering WHY these uber rich have declared war on public schools….because improved education does not seem to be their goal. (just study a bit of what DeVos has done)
Cindy,
You described exactly what Stephen Ronan and the Koch network seek to achieve. Republicans are stacking the courts and Massachusetts and other state education boards with colonialist lackeys.
Thanks to great people like Diane Ravitch, DINO’s like DFER, Colorado’s Michael Bennett and Jared Polis are finding it highly difficult to hide their ties to tech tyrants, hedge funders, heirs of discount retailing, etc..
There will come a time when the Catholic hierarchy will be forced to publicly choose between the American people who value Pope Francis’ teachings about fairness and the predation of the prosperity Catholics who give them big handouts.
Gates reputation is cracking. His story about Epstein doesn’t add up. His wife says she loses sleep over gender inequality. He was on the same side as the now-disgraced Kenneth Fisher in the campaign to defeat the re-election of judges who had rendered verdicts favorable to public schools. His talk fests with men like the Koch brothers show he’s a villain. The progressive Dems, who are growing in strength, dismiss his education schemes. The NAACP, BLM, ACLU and SPLC have spoken out about the threat posed by his privatization plot. He’s widely seen as anti-democracy.
Buying PR is having an ever diminishing effect for him.
You can fool all of the people…….
If Massachusetts Representative, Kevin Honan of Brighton, has links to Koch’s ALEC- WTH?