Retired professor of political science Maurice Cunningham recently read an article about Randi Weingarten that quoted Kelli Rodrigues as leader of the National Parents Union, and presumably a spokesperson for American parents. Cunningham decided to inform Michelle Goldberg, the author of the article in the New York Times, that Ms. Rodrigues is not exactly a representative parent leader.
He wrote:
Dear Ms. Goldberg,
I read your story on AFT president Randi Weingarten with interest, especially the portion about National Parents Union. I have been researching NPU and similar organizations for the past six years.
Thus it was good to see you accurately characterize NPU “as funded by the pro-privatization Walton Family Foundation” but there is even more about the story of its president, Keri Rodrigues, than she or NPU lets on. So far as I know she did work for SEIU as a communications coordinator from 2008-2014 but since then she has worked for a succession of Walton-funded anti-union fronts: as Executive Vice President of Strategy and Communications of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) from Nov. 2014-2015, state director of Families for Excellent Schools Inc. in 2015-2016 (omitted from her Linkedin page), president of Massachusetts Parents United from Dec. 2016-present, president of Massachusetts Parents Action from May 2017-present, and president of NPU from March 2019-present. In a concept paper sent to the Walton Family Foundation in 2019, Ms. Rodrigues and her allies specifically cited as a reason for funding NPU that “The teacher unions currently have no countervailing force. We envision the National Parents Union as being able to take on the unions in the national and regional media, and eventually on the ground in advocacy fights.”
I first became aware of Ms. Rodrigues in 2016 when I was following the dark money awash in the 2016 charter schools ballot initiative in Massachusetts. She was working for the IRS 501(c)(3) Families for Excellent Schools Inc. and I was exposing the millions in dark money flowing through the IRS 501(c)(4) Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy into the Great Schools Massachusetts ballot committee. After the 62-38% drubbing GSM received in that contest, the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance investigated and ordered FESA to disclose its true donors, to shut down, and to pay the largest civil forfeiture in OCPF history. It also placed severe restrictions on the political activities of Families for Excellent Schools Inc., which was the largest donor to FES Advocacy.
One thing that interests me is what I like to call the “creation story” of privatization fronts. For instance in the Walton Family Foundation story you link to in your story, we see Ms. Rodrigues professes that “I started talking to other parents in my community at coffee shops and libraries and decided we were going to organize.” But the 2016 campaign ended in November, Ms. Rodrigues claims to have started Massachusetts Parents United a month later, and the Waltons poured in several hundred thousand dollars in 2017, mostly through Education Reform Now Inc. (the Walton-funded sister to DFER) as MPU secured its tax status. From 2018-2020, the Waltons put $1.85 million into MPU, with $450,000 of that apparently going to help start up NPU in 2020.
NPU has a similar “creation story”: two Latina moms start a National Parents Union. And then the Waltons jump in with hundreds of thousands of dollars, joined by foundations operating under the bequests of the Gates, Broads, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Schustermans, Michael Dell, Reed Hastings, John Arnold, and the Vela Education Fund, a joint venture of the Waltons and Charles Koch. Immediately the two moms hired international communications firm Mercury LLC and top Republican and Walton pollster Echelon Insights. It seems a bit suspicious.
So, in 2020 I examined the “parent” organizations that NPU seemed to be claiming as its members on Twitter (NPU has declined to provide me a member list and has never provided a list of member organizations on its web site). I collected seventy organizations or activists that seemed to be part of an organization. I was able to place 64 organizations into categories and found that many were charter school chains or other privatization organizations. I found only four I could categorize as parent organizations, including MPU and one in Minnesota that had organized at the same time as NPU. I’m not aware of any publicly available evidence that NPU represents parents at all. It represents the Waltons and their billionaire co-investors.
As Ms. Rodrigues’s Linkedin profile indicates, she has a B.S. in communications and that has been her role in professional life, not union organizing. Her career with the Waltons has been lucrative. NPU’s Form 990 tax return for 2020 shows that her reportable compensation from NPU in 2020 was $135,769. Reportable compensation from related organizations was $208,207, and estimated amount of other compensation from the organization and related organizations was $34,322. The related organizations are the Walton-funded Massachusetts Parents United and Massachusetts Parents Action. Total compensation across all related organizations for Ms. Rodrigues in 2020 was $378,298. The Form 990 also disclosed that Ms. Rodrigues and COO Tim Langan are engaged. Mr. Langan’s total compensation across related organizations was $248,479 in 2020. Combined total compensation for the two was $626,777.
You were correct to write “Beyond the immediate well-being of families and teachers, the future of public education as we know it is at stake.” Privatizers like the Waltons and their partners are using the Covid crisis as an opportunity to attack and undermine public education. For obvious reasons they can’t become the public face of that activity, so they underwrite Ms. Rodrigues and NPU to masquerade as parent representatives.
Sincerely,
Maurice T. Cunningham
After Cunningham wrote to The Times to complain about the megaphone for a front group for the Waltons, the Hechinger Report published a puff piece about the NPU, mentioning the Waltons but disassociating NPR from the Walton’s anti-public school, anti-union, pro-charter views. The Waltons don’t fund groups that don’t share their ideology.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Keri Rodrigues lives in my state. I am an actual public school parent of 4 kids and she has me blocked on Twitter after I pointed out her paid position by the Waltons, so she’s definitely not representing me. She needs to continue to be called out and media needs to find other sources of parent perspective, she shows up everywhere.
key recognition: how many of the anti-whatever “players” are turning up repeatedly outside their own home locations
We’re in a non-exclusive club. She blocked me too.
Have to hand it to the ed reform marketing department though- she’s quoted in just about every education article as the “voice of parents”.
That and “Moms Defending Education”, another ed reform group.
We get the full scope of parental opinion- as long as it’s vetted, pre-approved, funded and created by ed reformers.
The national exposure is because National Parents Union immediately upon its founding retained the international and well-connected communications firm Mercury LLC to manage PR. Mercury does not come cheap. Ms. Rodrigues is a communications specialist and a good one. So was her co-founder Alma Marquez (since departed and avoiding the press). So was much of the original board. It’s a communications shop.
Board of Directors tells one a lot:
https://nationalparentsunion.org/about/leadership/
Same ed reform echo chamber members leading this effort as all the other ed reform groups. “Rah rah for charters! Boo hiss for public schools!”
But which board is the real board? https://www.masspoliticsprofs.org/2021/03/11/national-parents-union-turmoil-at-the-top/
Dan Weisberg, NPU board member, is now First Deputy Chancellor for the NYC public schools. The Ed Reformers now control the NYC public schools, i guess.
Dorothy, You are right, I fear. Weisberg has an illustrious career in Ed disruption groups.
Bery disappointing that Michelle Goldberg used such an obviously shoddy source. She should know better.
She’s not alone. NPU hired at great expense the international communications firm Mercury LLC. Goldberg at least identified NPU as Walton funded, more than most journalists can manage.
Mercury LLC also represented Michelle Rhee.
The new mayor of Cleveland has a good list for improving public schools, and it isn’t the boilerplate “ed reform approved” list we’ve seen for the last 20 years. Really practical, positive improvements for existing public schools. Not cheerleading or exaggerating successes or promoting gimmicks- solid, specific improvements:
https://www.bibbforcle.com/high-qualityeducation
I was suprised because he was at one time a TFA employee. So apparently some of them can do their own thinking 🙂
He includes “labor unions” as partners in vocational education (which is very much the norm in Ohio – one of my children completed a labor union apprenticeship in skilled trades) but excluded from ed reform plans, due the anti union stance of ed reform funders.
You have to give the right and the privatizer’s, one and the same in spite of billionaire “Liberals ” being in their ranks; credit for their tactics. As I have heard Union leaders say “it ain’t about God Gays and Guns its your wallet ” . Bloomberg and Gates understand that
they are not “Liberals” .
A big problem that Unions have is outsourcing their operations to people with no Union backgrounds. The SEIU has 1.1 million members. You might think that out of that, they could have chosen some active member from the ranks of that membership to be a “Communications Director” . Or at least they could have groomed an active member sending them for what ever training is necessary. Many Unions actually have programs that pay for continuing education toward degrees. Yet even those that have these programs hire outside “experts” as organizers, some right out of school. Then they are “simply shocked ” when all too often more money from anti union forces lure these people away; to become the most vociferous union busters.
AstroTurf right wing groups have been very visible. That visibility allows them to shape a narrative in public opinion. Weingarten sitting with focus groups is not moving anyone . What Weingarten has not done is the hard work bringing her members too the streets to shape a counter narrative, few unions have for decades. The Red for Ed movement which had union support was allowed to die. It died even as the gains were not secured. And if the greater goal was for the students and future of Public Education than it should have not ended even as some gains were secured. The privatizers certainly have not given up.
The Oligarchy will always be able to out spend workers/unions the only thing Unions can counter this with is bodies. Whether it is a failure of “Business Unionism ” to bring teachers to the fight or construction workers in NYC battling multi billionaire developers like Steve Ross . The failure is profound, Union Leaders are content to secure small gains that benefit members in the short run keeping leadership
in power while the ship goes down. Only 10.3 of the workforce is now unionized.
Unions have to become social movements bringing parents and other workers into these battles or they are doomed.
That 10.3% unionization rate is just stunning (in a bad way). In the 1950s, the unionization rate was in the 30% to 35% range, I believe that’s the highest it ever got in the US. Iceland has a unionization rate above 90%.
In the 1920s the unionization rate had dropped among private sector employees ( there were no significant Public Sector unions ) from near 20% during WW1 to as low as 5%. The Red scares of the 20s and an empowered Oligarchy decimated Unions. The UMW went from 100k members to under 10 k after the mine wars.
The Great Depression gave Unions momentum to push for the NLRA . The Taft Hartley Act (1947 ) and Landrum Griffin(59) took it all back even if it took multiple decades to have affects. Both took away tools like the Secondary boycott and Card check, They also allowed labor violence to be designated as racketeering. Thus holding a Union and its leadership responsible for acts of individual members.
Right to Work in itself is not the problem. Industry relocating to the Right to Work States where race was used as wedge against workers to keep unions out, decimated Union membership.
Just look at almost every organizing drive that has failed in the South and see how it breaks down on racial lines.
Joel,
Thanks for your always informative posts.
Apropos of nothing, I happened to watch the movie Norma Rae recently. I hadn’t watched it since I was a teenager with no real knowledge about labor issues or unions.
I was wondering if it would stand up to time, and I was surprised that it did. Sally Field’s performance was brilliant. Worth seeing again as an escape from the current, depressing reality.
Fascinating post, really made me think. You have a great point. Rodrigues went with SEIU not because she is pro-labor but because she is a communications professional and SEIU had a job in comms. When that ended (i wonder about tht backstory) she simply looked for another comms job and it was with the anti-union DFER. As a bonus, she is much more valuable to them as a “former union” person!
This is unlikely to surprise- “The Laura and John Arnold Foundation to restructure as LLC” (1-29-2019)
New name- Arnold Ventures
Another dark money gambit
How does Parents Amplifying Voices in Education (PAVE) compare to National Parents Union? PAVE originated in D.C.
PAVE’s founder and exec. director, Maya C Martin (Dartmouth), is married to James Cadogan (Princeton) who worked for Arnold Ventures. He was also with the Obama administration.
I don’t know that organization. Anything to do with Arnold sends off alarms to me.
Another organization that deserves review is Harvard’s Leadership Institute for Faith and Education, founded in 2017. A former Gates exec. is at the helm. The Institute’s homepage has a quote echoing Paul Weyrich, it’s redundant to have faith inspired and secular human service organizations. (Btw-Taxpayers have made Catholic organizations the 3rd largest U.S. employer.) A second quote calls for faith initiatives to partner with public schools. First, Harvard encouraged faculty like Gates-funded Roland Fryer to drive ed reform. Now, Harvard has an institute that lends credibility to the self-appointed, God-driven (so they claim) working in tandem with public schools.
What is Michael Winerup (sp.-?) doing now?
Former EXCELLENT (& likely exiled) Education Writer for the NYT.
Michael Winerip was a terrific education columnist for the Times who understood the games that privatizers were playing. The Times ended his weekly education column, put him on a new beat called “Boomers.” He accepted a buyout and retired.
Sorry, I don’t know Winerup, except I know the name.
Small correction — in the first paragraph, she is referred to as “Kelli” but her name is “Keri”. Thanks.
Has anyone written a critique of the work of the NPU with specifics? For folks not familiar with the history or might hope to find common ground perhaps? Is it a shared belief that that Ms. Rodrigues sincerely believes her work is a net good for students? I believe the criticisms I read here are sincerely based on experience and observed and measured outcomes. I believe Ms. Rodrigues might agree. Solidarity is possible, no?
Maurice Cunningham has written in great detail about the so-called “National Parents Union.” It is a tool of the billionaire Waltons. It is hostile to public schools. It advocates for charter schools.
Solidarity is not possible, Denise. Ms. Rodrigues is a shill for the corporate overlords, plain and simple.