Maurice Cunningham is a political scientist who recently retired from the University of Massachusetts. He recently published Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.
When he learned that the U.S. Department of Education had included the National Parents Union on its list of parent organizations advising the Department, he wrote the following letter to Secretary Cardona:
June 28, 2022
Secretary Miguel Cardona
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20202
Dear Secretary Cardona,
The Department of Education has made a significant error in including the National Parents Union among the groups invited to participate in the National Parents and Families Engagement Council. NPU does not represent parents and has few if any parent organizations as members. It is a front operation for the policy preferences of wealthy individuals who wish to transform American education to meet their ideological preferences, political goals, to keep their own taxes low, and to profit off what Rupert Murdoch has termed a $500 billion market.
I am very familiar with National Parents Union. As a recently retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) I have been researching groups like NPU since 2015 and continue to do so.
Since NPU is related to a group I was already following named Massachusetts Parents United (the leader of both groups is Keri Rodrigues) I took note when a concept paper for the new group surfaced in April 2019, appealing to the Walton Family Foundation for funding (WFF is the primary sponsor of MPU, over $2.2 million from 2017 through 2020). The concept paper listed three goals. First, to impact the 2020 Democratic Party nominating process. Second, to support “dozens of organizations (that) are building strong pockets of parent power.” Third, “to take on the unions in the national and regional media, and eventually on the ground in advocacy fights.”
National Parents Union does not now and never has published a list of its member parent organizations. However I researched this question for my book based upon organizations NPU was claiming as participants to its January 2020 founding convention, primarily in claims made on Twitter and other social media. On its website NPU was claiming to be “a network of highly effective parent organizations and grassroots activists.” I collected seventy organizations or activists that seemed to be part of an organization. I created categories for different types of organizations and was able to categorize 64 of the 70 organizations. Only four of them even purported to represent parents. There were 15 charter school organizations and nine charter school trade organizations. There were another 15organizations I categorized as education options/choice, groups which present as helping navigate among different schools but which are designed to funnel students to charter schools. That makes 39 organizations tied in to the charter schools industry. There are nineteen organizations I identified as “civic” and some I could further identify, for instance civic/Latinx, civic/civil rights, civic/autism, etc. Within the civic groups that could be identified, there were four I categorized as civic/parents.
I was able to locate primary state locations for 53 of the 70 organizations. Of those I could place in states, there are 22 states represented plus the District of Columbia. The Massachusetts parent organization was MPU, the Walton operation. The Minnesota parent organization incorporated about the same time as NPU did. The other two parent organizations were also doubtful.
NPU’s arrival was announced in a January 2020 story in U.S. News and World Report, heralding “Two Latina mothers from opposite sides of the country” starting a parents group to “disrupt” education. One founder, Alma Marquez of California, disappeared from the organization about 8 months later. Ms. Rodrigues, known in her days as a radio host in the heavily Portuguese city of Fall River as the “pint-sized Portuguese pundit” remains.
Even with Ms. Marquez gone it is difficult to sort out NPU’s real leadership. At the January 2020 meeting Ms. Marquez was elected to a three year term as secretary-treasurer. She was a director in filings with the Massachusetts Secretary of State but left by March 2021. In March 2021 the National Parents Union website listed three board members: Peter Cunningham, Bibb Hubbard, and Dan Weisberg. But NPU registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation with the Secretary of State in Massachusetts where its annual report filed November 1, 2020 showed two directors: Keri Rodrigues and Tim Langan. The Secretary filings listed Ms. Rodrigues as president and clerk and Tim Langan as treasurer (he was chief operating officer on the website). In January 2020 Gerard Robinson was also listed as a founding director, but he left a year later. Ms. Hubbard is also gone and filings with the Secretary have been updated but still do not match the website.
Of the founding directors and officers, Mr. Cunningham, Ms. Hubbard, Mr. Weisberg, Ms. Marquez, and Ms. Rodrigues all were communications professionals or had significant experience in public relations. Ms. Rodrigues, always billed as a parent activist, has been a communications professional for nearly a quarter of a century, since commencing her career with CBS Radio in 1998 while completing her 2000 BS in Broadcast, Telecommunications, and Media Management from Temple University. Since 2014 she has been executive vice president – strategy and communications for Democrats for EducationReform in Boston, state director of Families for Excellent Schools, president of the IRC 501(c)(4) Massachusetts Parent Action and 501(c)(3) Massachusetts Parents United, and president of IRC 501(c)(3) National Parents Union. Corporate records indicate that she and Mr. Langan (to whom she is engaged) are the principals of the Estrella Group LLC, a political consultant firm. Across the two state and one national organizations they paid themselves over $626,000 in 2020—an atypical income for working parents.
NPU has a page where one can “find your delegate.” Delegate suggests that someone has been chosen by others to represent them. But I cannot find where NPU explains what their delegates do and it appears that delegates are not chosen by parents (or the mostly non-existent parent organizations) but from the top down, by NPU itself. For example in Massachusetts—the corporate headquarters of NPU and MPU—when NPU wanted to find a state “delegate” it advertised for someone to become “an official Massachusetts delegate” on Twitter!* (* indicates material in Addendum).
No, National Parents Union is not about parents at all.
To understand NPU, follow the money. The Walton Family Foundation funneled $400,000 to NPU in 2020 through MPU.The Vela Education Fund, a joint venture of the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute, invested $700,000.The CEO of Vela is an oil and gas executive from Koch’s corporate holdings. Other donors include the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and The City Fund, which receives funding from the Waltons, the Hastings Fund, and the Arnold Foundation. Reed Hastings has called for the abolition of school boards. John Arnold is most well-known for his campaign to gut workers’ pension plans.
Most parents have taken tickets at the high school football game or baked goods to be sold at intermission of the school play. Not many have started a little parents’ organization that collected $1,481,110 in its first year. NPU paid out $400,461 in grants and had a payroll of $634,273. In October 2021 the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced a grant of $1,500,000 to support NPU—an organization that had not existed less than two years before. Also in 2021 the Silicon Valley Community Foundation donated $1,500,000 to NPU. SVCF is a donor advised fund, a pass through that protects the identity of the ultimate check writer. It’s deep dark money—the true source of the $1,500,000 will never be known. But it isn’t parents.
Small wonder then that since its inception NPU has retained the services of top conservative and Walton Family pollster Echelon Insights and the international communications firm Mercury LLC. Just like any other infant parents group.
NPU affects a different posture than recently founded “parents” operations that have attacked Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ youth. NPU purports to speak up for people of color (as did Families for Excellent Schools, which was driven by the Waltons and wealthy Wall Streeters). Scratch the surface though and NPU’s billionaire-driven agenda appears. NPU has been happy to surf on the turmoil created by right wing attack groups with its own “Disrupt the Status Quo—School Board Edition” campaign, and after the victory of Glenn Youngkin in Virginiaoffered by tweet to work with Leader Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans on a Parents Bill of Rights. Ms. Rodrigueshas appeared at a forum organized by Betsy Devos’s American Federation for Children and just recently on a panel with Governor Youngkin’s Secretary of Education. In a Twitter exchange with a friendly journalist who was doubting the level of “School Board Chaos” being created by right wing groups, she responded “Depends on the type of chaos we are talking about.”*
That remark may help illuminate a paradox of the recently contrived “parents” movement: why is Charles Koch funding both the “progressive” NPU and the white backlash Parents Defending Education? And the answer is that both groups are designed to create chaos in the public education system. Chaos is the product.
As a “parent” group NPU is mostly distinguished by a lack of parents. It will produce polling information but as you understand interest group polling is going to show what the interest group wants you to see. NPU has had substantial media success—with the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, and Fox—but it’s worth asking yourself: how do two moms on opposite coasts afford Mercury LLC to run communications?
DOE should be working with real parents, not billionaire directed right wing fronts masquerading as parents. If the department wishes to hear the viewpoints of the Waltons, Gates, Koch et al., heavens knows they have access to key policy makers. DOE should not permit them to sneak in the door masquerading as parents.
Sincerely,
Maurice T. Cunningham
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This note forwarded to aaace-nla@googlegroups.com (National Literacy Association/Adult Learning)
“FYI all: I forward the below to suggest that we in adult education be aware of similar movements in our own fields generated by the same political forces. Be well,
Catherine Blanche King”
Rounding up the usual suspects:
“To understand NPU, follow the money. The Walton Family Foundation funneled $400,000 to NPU in 2020 through MPU. The Vela Education Fund, a joint venture of the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute, invested $700,000. The CEO of Vela is an oil and gas executive from Koch’s corporate holdings. Other donors include the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and The City Fund, which receives funding from the Waltons, the Hastings Fund, and the Arnold Foundation. Reed Hastings has called for the abolition of school boards. John Arnold is most well-known for his campaign to gut workers’ pension plans.” CBK
My favorite part: “Most parents have taken tickets at the high school football game or baked goods to be sold at intermission of the school play. Not many have started a little parents’ organization that collected $1,481,110 in its first year.”
This is a big issue in the macro world of advocacy politics in DC, as well as in state houses and local governments. Just exactly who do “organizations” represent, how many to they represent, what is their mission statement, and who comprises their boards and staff, as well as how they are compensated. Laura Chapman understood this implicitly, as do, for example, Jan, Diane, and Mercedes. But surprisingly, in DC, its easy to get away with faking political clout and being taken seriously by policy makers who have no clue.
For example, my biggest pet peeve on this is the AARP, which claims millions of members as reason for political reasons, yet I have yet to meet anyone who became a member because of policy. Another one is the Right to Life Committee, which effectively shuts Congress down every January for a day or two. It claims 7 million “members” and 3,000 chapters. In reality, that huge crowd that comes every year to DC is likely the majority of its real membership. Having seen how organizations do this for years, note that the Right to Life Committee does not explain how it counts members. The assumption is that they are dues paying. But that’s a wrong assumption. The real number is likely generously guesstimated to count anyone who might have been in contact with a protest or a mailer or something and then cumulatively, not annually but over the life of the organization. So the number is incredibly deceptive. When you see a form letter “written” by your local chapter leader in your community, know that they actually represent about a couple of dozen of actual dues-paying, active members.
The same is true in every social political issue. One of the reasons policymakers accept these political carpetbaggers is because they are too lazy to the work that must be done and usually ends up being done sporadically by interested individuals.
One more example about the actual difference between government funding and support and private giving. The latter can never effectively cover the former, even when it is “modest.”
For example, all privately funded cancer research–all those advocacy groups from the American Cancer Society on down, all those golf tournaments and fun runs–totals about $1 billion in the U.S. In the last appropriation alone, the National Cancer Institute was $6.35 billion. Private initiatives will never pick up the difference or keep pace with the increases needed to maintain progress, no matter how committed they are. And that NCI funding does not go to some agency in DC. It is the funding that keeps virtually every reputable cancer center in the nation in business and functioning.
“History and tradition” dictates that members of Congress and the administration can only determine gross funding levels for medical research. The decisions about how it is divided and spent is largely left to scientists. And yes, while that too can be political, it is beyond the scope of this argument. But given the decision today’s Court decision today, which basically replaces a large body of constitutional law with contract law, could presage the day when politicians actually dictate the minutiae of how money is spent. Meaning more can go to a disease because it affects a prominent politician’s family rather than where a consensus of scientists decide the best opportunities are.
I have to give Roberts a lot of begrudging credit today. They saved the case for the end while the noise of all the other decisions would minimize the most consequential. This is not to minimize any of the others. But the is the most difficult to explain simply and changes our governing processes forever.
GregB Having a tax-collecting government NOT FOR PROFIT but in the name of “the people” and controlled by laws and statutes flowing “down” from government institutions and the Constitution, and beholden to the people . . . makes all the difference in the world.
The other “options” are authoritarian/arbitrary/unchecked whims of a dictator; private and corporate institutional controls (more whims) which are only beholden to the public if they chose to be (again, unchecked); or a return to the vagaries of tribal chaos, which include never-ending religious wars. CBK
I will admit, thanks to Diane, I now pay attention to names on buildings and who’s behind them. I used to think it was wonderful rich folks gave so much. Not anymore. Not all donations are equal.
You might not know that I am President of the Future Unconceived Citizens Kouncil, the only organization in America representing all the voters who have not yet been conceived. Our membership for 2043-2053, alone, is OVER 38 MILLION, which puts us on par with the AARP!!! Furthermore, where every other organization is backward-looking, we are what you might call a FORWARD-LOOKING organization. Some people look at the way things are and say, why; we look at the way things will be and say you can’t prove that we’re wrong! To support our mission, please send a 12-inch stack of $20 bills to the address, below, in the Cayman Islands. The Future Unconceived Citizens Kouncil is not affiliated with the Trump Organization but, hey, Donald and Erik, give us a call!
Bob “Really”? CBK :o/
nice summation
Diane and All See what’s going on at the Gates Foundation . . . such sweet notes and encouragements that in fact run interference for Gates and other neo-liberals to “improve education” (double-speak for foundational efforts to “kill public education”).
Bob Hughes, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation K12education@communications.gatesfoundation.org
Thank you, Dr. Cunningham!
The DoE was staffed before Miguel Cardona was confirmed to lead it. It was staffed with people from the Gates Foundation and people with other ties to the education industrial complex. I wonder how much control over the department Sec Cardona purports to have is as much a facade as the astroturf parent groups he invites into the DoE. If there is one thing consistent about the destroyers of public education, it is that every word that creeps and crawls from their lips is window dressing. Parent group indeed. Horsefeathers. My left foot is a parent group.
The corporate types call it synergy. It’s not synergy. Business interests and public education have a parasitic, not symbiotic relationship.
Maurice Cunningham is a national treasure. I have so much respect for people whose writings are based in real critical thinking — providing evidence and research that led him to his opinions. It is a national crime that the so-called liberal media ignores those who are actually analyzing numbers and statistics (like Cunningham, Gary Rubinstein, Mercedes Schneider and others who should be included whom I apologize for not recalling.) Too often reporters are far too lazy to try to understand the complexities of this and instead they reach for the easy soundbite from some billionaire-approved source who will “reform-splain” what they should think. When it comes to “the other side”, they have already made up their mind because some billioinaires’ shill reform-splained it to them.
Instead of throughtful, curious journalists like carolynsf, education reporting is mostly re-written press releases.
It was absolutely not a coincidence that both the NYT and the Washington Post wrote stories about a billionaire-funded rally to oppose Biden’s new charter regulations and quoted the VERY SAME RANDOM CHARTER DAD. I have no idea if that was some quote in the press release put out by an anti-public school PR agency or both reporters were guided directly to this dad at the rally by some PR shill, but the likelihood of them both coming across the same random dad (who was pretty much the only supposedly “real” parent quoted) at a rally is low.
Reporters aren’t interested in what is true anymore. It’s so much easier to report both sides as equally valid and be done. And with public education, it’s usually the billionaire-funded side that is presented as “non-partisan” who only cares about kids, and the folks doing the research to learn the facts who are presented as partisan shills.
Thank you, Dr. Cunningham. Your research is exactly what DOE should consider before letting this mascara de proceed