Maurice Cunningham watches the flow of “Dark Money” into the privatization of public funding for schools. A professor of political science, he has recently followed the money trail of the “National Parents Union,” which he points out is neither “national,” nor “parents,” nor a “union.”
NPU markets itself as if it were a “grassroots” group, but it is funded by the Walton Family Foundation and Charles Koch and enjoys the high-priced assistance of Mercury Communications LLP to get its anti-public school, anti-union message into the national media. Mercury currently represents Teach for America and at one time represented Eva Moskowitz (who fired them).
With this expensive marketing, NPU presents itself as an authentic voice of parents.
Cunningham writes:
Here’s an example of the coverage from the New York Times: “National Parents Union, a collection of 200 advocacy organizations across 50 states representing parents from communities of color.” But there is no publicly available evidence that NPU represents parent groups. My research shows that it is mostly comprised of charter school and associated organizations.
Nor am I aware that any of these media outlets has reported on the funding of National Parents Union, which includes not only the Walton Family Foundation and Charles Koch, but a billionaire boys club of astonishing levels of wealth. (The one outlet that consistently reports on the funders is The74.org, which also receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation. So compliments to them.)
These media outlets accept the story offered up by Mercury LLC and the NPU Comms team, that there is a battle between teachers and parents. But as I said, NPU does not represent parents. If journalists need conflict there is a big one going on: teachers unions against the corporate behemoths of the Waltons, Koch, Gates, Dell, Arnold, and on and on. It’s a good story, just not the one NPU and Mercury are peddling.
You get what you pay for; NPU’s marketing is going great.
Right in the middle of a particularly heated local SM discussion on school reopening, NPU showed up, posting all the usual information on what they were, trying to lure these loud privileged parents to sign up. For all the noise they make, these parent groups have absolutely no knowledge of the history of privatization of Oakland’s schools. NPU takes advantage of that, and uses it to drive more of a wedge between parents and teachers. As soon as I posted that they were a fake “union” and that I couldn’t understand why they even used “union” in the name since their handlers hated real unions so much, they skedaddled. I’ve never seen a post disappear that fast. Oakland isn’t part of your privatization party any more; go away.
They so completely track the rest of the ed reform echo chamber I’m surprised anyone at all is fooled, no matter how sophisticated or well-funded the marketing.
Another charter/voucher cheerleading org, to join the rest. Bash public schools, promote charters and vouchers, enforce strict conformity with ed reform dogma. How is it any different than the rest of the ed reform echo chamber?
Today ed reformers are opposing one of the Biden nominees, because she veers from the “public schools suck!” party line ed reform requires of all new hires.
God forbid there should be an advocate for public schools and public school students in the federal government, right? It must be composed exclusively of ed reformers with the right resume and correct views. They’re going to demand a US Department of Education composed exclusively of Bush/Obama/Trump retreads because we must continue to do exactly what we’ve done the last 20 years.
I would like to suggest a strategy. We need to feed these stories into local news stations. The nightly news and weather loves corruption stories almost as much as it loves to depict the misery of toothless unfortunates who have lost a loved one to a fire or tornado. The problem is that they have no time to investigate. But here in these pages are NPE investigations of charter schools, most of which are shell games for making money.
Somehow, we need to make it easy for the Channel ___ investigative reporter to get his hands on this information in a form he can use to be on the air by nightfall with an investigation that looks like it belongs to their station exclusively. This seems like a way to get citizens to become aware of the criminal activity that is taking place. If people see corruption in their own city connected with charter schools, we can win this contest.
Roy. I appreciate your idea but here are some sobering facts about media ownership, print and television.
https://www.governing.com/now/How-the-Decline-of-Local-News-Threatens-Local-Democracy.html
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Rupert Murdoch’s daughter-in-law is on an Aspen Institute commission. The rich enact public policy in America to benefit themselves.
Aspen Institute is the titular head for the Bill Gates-funded Pahara Institute which promotes school privatization. Pahara is just one of Aspen’s’ schemes. Clinton was a favorite son of the organization
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Information in the U.S. is distorted to protect the conservative Christian sect because their tribe elects politicians who serve the wealthy. Daily Beast drew attention to the bias, “Why ‘Islamic’ trended after a mass shooting in Bolder and ‘Christian’ did not after one in Atlanta…A Christian 21- year- old appears to have been driven by his twisted religious beliefs while a Muslim 21- year-old mass shooter doesn’t appear to have been very religious.”
yes, that thing which blocks so much effort on the part of teachers and parents and students and school employees: the rich enact policy to benefit themselves
Marvelous, great news! Becky Pringle and the NEA hit the nail on the head: https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing. I fell out of my chair! It’s exciting!
I forgot to say sorry, I need to go off topic.
I also forgot to say Bill Gates is a racist.
Hope I don’t forget next time!
A little Bill Gates is a dangerous thing,
Drink not, just taste not that pestilential spring:
There, shallow droughts intoxicate the brain,
And spitting Gates out sobers us again.
Draughts.
The most disturbing thing about Bill Gates, especially with his history of bullying public schools, is a search of his national wealth starts with..126 billion, then 135, 115, 106, 89, 110, 138 (wikipedia), and 182 from investopedia….the first page of 411,000 responses to an ordinary search. No one actually knows, probably including Gates himself just how much money……but one thing seems certain….all the screaming and yelling at unionized teachers and waste in public schools can be dwarfed by any estimate of Gates’ wealth you want to believe.
Try googling Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, which reports daily fluctuations of the billionaires’ wealth.
Bloomberg Billionaires Index says that as of today, Bill Gates’ net worth is $138 Billion. Unfortunately he is only #3, behind Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Gates added $62.5 million to his fortune yesterday. Of the past year, he added $6.67 Billion to his wealth.