Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at U of Mass who specializes in following the money, especially Dark Money, where the donors are anonymous.
The Koch-Walton backed National Parents Union is experiencing turmoil at the top and severe mismanagement with two boards of directors featuring revolving directors and a disappeared co-founder..
The organization is holding a convening on May 15 and its members should demand some answers.
Here are questions they should be asking the leadership. Any media member who would like to learn about who is pulling the strings at NPU, feel free.
1. National Parents Union has two boards of directors, one board listed on the NPU webpage, and another on record with the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Corporations Division. The website board members are Peter Cunningham, Dan Weisberg, Vivett Dukes, Arthur Soriano, Vincent Slaughter, Maria del Carmen Parro de Cano, and Dr. Paul Bloomberg. The directors listed on the November 2020 annual report required in Massachusetts are Keri Rodrigues and Tim Langan. There are important legal consequences involved in serving as a director. Can leadership clarify who exercise powers over the National Parents Union? This would be a good question to be asked by Mr. Cunningham, Ms. Dukes, Mr. Soriano, Mr. Slaughter, Ms. Parro de Cano, or Dr. Bloomberg.
2. The74 identified Ms. Rodrigues as elected in January 2020 to the presidency of NPU for a period of three years. In the annual statement required to be filed with the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office in November 2020 Ms. Rodrigues is recorded as serving a term as president that ends on December 31, 2025. How long is Ms. Rodrigues’s term and when will the next election for officers of National Parents Union occur? A good question for anyone wanting to run for the well-compensated position of president.
3. In The74, Alma Marquez was identified as a co-founder and was also recorded as elected secretary-treasurer for a three year term. By August 2020 Ms. Marquez disappeared from NPU’s website. Ms. Marquez was also recorded as a director in NPU’s Articles of Organization filed with Massachusetts Secretary of State and signed by President Rodrigues on April 4, 2019. Ms. Marquez was dropped on the November 2020 annual report and from the webpage. What has happened to Ms. Marquez? Will there be an election for her successor as secretary-treasurer?
4. Not only Ms. Marquez has disappeared. Original website board member Gerard Robinson disappeared sometime between November 15 and December 8, 2020. Since March of this year original website board member Bibb Hubbard has disappeared meaning, that two of the four original website board members and the co-founder have been ousted in little over a year. Why are they gone and what explains the management follies?
5. In the 2020 annual report filed with the Massachusetts Secretary of State the two directors are identified as Ms. Rodrigues and Tim Langan. Ms. Rodrigues is listed as president and clerk, Mr. Langan as treasurer. They hold the same positions with Massachusetts Parents United (with one additional director), where they are also the two highest paid employees. Does National Parents Union have a Compensation Committee to assure fair compensation and adherence to ethical guidelines over conflicts of interest?Who are the highest compensated directors and officers, and what do they make?
6. On May 8 on Fox News Ms. Rodrigues stated that “We’ve got parent organizations in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico.” The only independent analysis of NPU membership shows that membership is largely charter schools and chains in twenty-two states with only four parent organizations represented. Will NPU go public with a list of its parent organizations?
7. According to published reports at The74, the Vela Education Fund, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, National Parents Union has received funding from the following oligarchs through their own foundations or philanthropies they contribute to and control: the Walton family, Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Dell, the late Eli Broad, Reed Hoffman, John Arnold, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, and Charles Koch. Are there other major donors? What is the annual budget?
8. The Vela Education Fund, a joint venture of the Walton family and Charles Koch, funds National Parents Union as well as the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has been identified as conservative Christian and anti-gay. Is the funding relationship with Vela consistent with NPU’s stated goal of honoring diversity?
9. Charles Koch also seems to be behind a new far right operation called Parents Defending Education, which is explicitly set up to fight against diversity and to honor the country’s white heritage. Will NPU denounce Parents Defending Education?
10. On the May 8 FoxNews program Ms. Rodrigues indicated reservations about the FDA’s approval and CDC review of the Covid-19 vaccine for 12-15 year olds. Is NPU advocating that CDC guidance is unreliable and that parents should not have their 12-15 year old children vaccinated against Covid-19?
A real board and real members would want answer to all of these questions. Open the floor!
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy.]
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The worst part of the anti-public school lobbying groups is not that they work against public schools- they don’t support public schools so they should certainly be allowed to work against them.
The worst part if how they have so much influence over the policy that public schools, public school students and public school families get stuck with.
They don’t support our schools, they don’t attend our schools and they don’t do any work in or on our schools.
Why are they running public education policy?
What if we tried hiring and paying people who actually support public schools and public school students? Think that would work out better for them than ed reform has worked out for them?
Still waiting for one of these ed reform groups or individuals to point to ONE THING they accomplished that benefited any student in any public school, and no, mandating standardized tests doesn’t count.
Why are charter and voucher lobbyists directing public school policy? Couldn’t we just instead hire people who value our schools and students? Try that for change?
I’m really not exaggerating when I say that all ed reform policy is informed by groups that don’t support public schools.
Here’s an example:
“Surveys make it clear that there is widespread support for a deep reimagining of K–12 education—not just tinkering—particularly among parents. In a national poll(link is external) by the Echelon Partners (conducted for the National Parents Union), 55 percent agreed that “Schools should be focused on rethinking how we educate students, coming up with new ways to teach children moving forward as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.” Another nationwide poll(link is external) conducted by Beacon Research and Shaw for the Walton Family Foundation showed that most parents see the influx of federal education dollars as a critical opportunity to make bold changes. In particular, they want to see more investments in work-based learning, meeting students’ emotional and mental health needs, and upgrades to digital learning.”
Why are the Kochs and the Waltons directing US public school policy? They’re not even “neutral” on our schools- they actively lobby against them.
Couldn’t we ask, I don’t know, at least a couple of people who support public schools what should happen in public schools?
The ed reform echo chamber don’t just run their own schools- charter and private schools, they also police, direct and monitor the public schools they work to replace.
How is that fair to public school students? They have no one who supports their schools at the table.
Ed reformers are really claiming there is some kind of “open debate” within their echo chamber?
Every single org, lobbying group and university department is funded by the same 3 ed reform billionaires.
They all sound exactly the same because they all work for the same people.
Maybe they all believe whatever Walton and Koch pump out there, I don’t know, but this is in no way “open” or “diverse”. It is ONE very narrow, “market based” vision of public education. There’s no “diverse” viewpoints and one can tell it by the “boards” that run the orgs. They go from promoting charters and vouchers in government to promoting charters and vouchers in ed reform orgs- the exact same people.
The whole Obama ed team moved en masse from pushing “market based ed reform” in the government to the same ed reform groups that directed policy in the Obama Administration. It’s seamless.
If I took the names off the speeches you could not tell the difference between a Jeb Bush speech on education or a John Kasich speech or an Arne Duncan speech. There’s not a dimes worth of difference in any of it.
seamless: yes
Poll conducted by lobbying groups who do nothing but push vouchers and charters finds….
you guessed it! “Parents” want more vouchers and more vouchers.
“David Osborne
Poll: priorities of parents with school-age kids are 1) more college credit, work-based learning & apprenticeships 2) better instructional/digital materials for teachers 3) support for emotional/mental health 4) more school options like charters & pods.”
Echo. Chamber. It’s uniformly, lock step anti-public school and it all blindly cheerleads charters and vouchers and private contractors because it’s all conducted by people who work to replace public schools with charters, vouchers and private contractors.
They may well succeed at this expensive, sophisticated marketing campaign to eradicate public schools but it doesn’t have anything to do with “education”. It’s about setting up privatized systems to replace public systems. There’s not even any concern for quality. The privatized systems are “better” because they’re privatized.
If the public ends up regretting turning public education over to 5 billionaires whom do we hold accountable? Can we get it back if the privatized systems are a disaster?
If the media was not so co-opted, they would ask questions about why an organization made of up charter schools and funded by right wing billionaires is allowed to present itself as “National PARENTS Union”. Call them what they are — National Charter Union.
I assume that if I incorporated an organization of myself and some parent friends and called myself “US Parents United for Education”, reporters would not dutifully quote me in every single article about charter schools and breathlessly cover anything I wrote in a press release as “news” as if I represent ALL parents — (implying my organization represents millions of them) — who are very concerned about the blatant lies of charter schools and the children abused and harmed by their lies.
I assume that Chalkbeat NY and the NYT would ignore our organization the way they barely cover anything that Leonie Haimson and her organization does.
But maybe if some powerful billionaires decided to give me and my friends lots of money because I agreed to push whatever narrative about public schools pleased those funders, Chalkbeat, NYT, the NY Daily News and the rest of the mainstream media would prominently feature quotes for me in every news article about education and present me as the true voice of parents everywhere.
If a group of public school parents joined the National Parents Union, would we be allowed to vote for officers? Or is it run by the donors and board, and only the parents who are favored by them get to lead and be heard?
I suggested that parents who don’t want to privatize public education and take money from public schools and give it to charters already rolling in money should join this supposed voice of parents.
But it turns out it is not so easy. From the website:
“The National Parents Council, the elected governing body of the National Parents Union, is comprised of powerful parent activists and advocates from across the nation. This body accepts applications from individuals on an on-going basis. Please complete this application by the first of the month. The council makes decisions regarding membership on the third Thursday of each month. You will be informed of approval or denial by the fourth week of the month you submitted.”
And then later I see that:
For all media inquiries, please contact: NPU@Mercuryllc.com
So this “grassroots parents” organization decides which parents are allowed to join and pays a fancy PR company to publicize their organization??
How many grassroots organizations made up of REAL parents hire PR firms?
Outrageous that the so-called education journalists present this as an organization whose voice must be heard over the voice of PTAs, and the real parents whose work isn’t being subsidized by very rich people.
Chiara is right: let’s keep our eyes on which media outlets quote these people as representing actual parents. Neither 74 nor Fox News concerns me, for obvious reasons. I also found an old USNews&WorldReports article dated 1/13/20 that bought into NPU hook, line & sinker. In one other article there—recent [5/12 “Angry White Parents…”], Keri Rodrigues scored a couple of quotes well into it.
I’m not thrilled that the NYT (4/14/21 “Online Schools are Here to Stay”) took an opinion from Rodrigues, as a parent (but noting ‘president of NPU’ with link to site). Fortunately her comments were listed well into the article after a number of other “just” parents.
NPU has shown up in two Chalkbeat articles. In the most recent (4/21/21 – on Learning Pods) Rodrigues got a few paras toward the end reporting that NPU spread grants from a +/-$1million pot to low-income POC parents/ community centers to organize pods, and also has supplied free youtube and website resources to at-home parents.
The earlier [2/18/21] Chalkbeat [2/18/21] cite is more interesting. The main body goes into detail on what appears to be a bona fide USC poll. A synopsis of NPU’s parent poll follows, noting that it found strikingly similar results.” I’d already noticed on the NPU site that the polls [as opposed to the aggressive language everywhere else on the site] looked to be realistic results, making me wonder if that aspect of their activity is more balanced. [Of course their blurbs describing poll results emphasize the ‘substantial’ size of minority anti-public-school opinion 😉]