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Boston: Billionaire Seth Klarman, Charter Love, and Dark Money

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2018 //
17

 

Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts who has become an expert on the subject of Dark Money. He has his own name for the billionaires devoted to charter schools. He calls them the “Financial Privatization Cabal.” That’s clever and accurate but I stick with “corporate reformers” because there are fewer syllables.*

Cunningham (no relation to the charter-loving Peter of the same last name) has done a deep dive into the Dark Money funders of the 2016 campaign to expand charter schools in Massachusetts via a referendum called Question 2. A New York City organization called Families for Excellent Schools (FES) arrived on the scene to bundle and dispense Dark Money and renamed itself Great Schools Massachusetts. (FES was funded by the Waltons and has now been replaced by a new group which calls itself Massachusetts Parents United, also Walton funded.)

What is Dark Money? It is money given to political campaigns by donors whose identities are hidden. The donors do not want their names to be revealed. So they give to a group like “Families for Excellent Schools.” After the charter lobby lost in Massachusetts in 2016, beaten by a sturdy coalition of teachers, parents, and volunteers, the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance conducted an inquiry and fined FES for failing to disclose the names of its donors. The fine was $426,00, along with a five-year ban on future political activity in Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter, FES folded due to a #MeToo scandal involving its executive director.

Before it closed its doors, FES was required to reveal its donors. One of them was  billionaire Seth Klarman.

Maurice Cunningham has checked out Klarman and found that he is one of the top donors to the Republican Party in New England. He doesn’t like Trump, so he recently gave $222,000 to the Democratic Party. That was front-page news in the Boston Globe.

Cunningham wonders why Klarman’s gift of $222,000 to the Democrats made the front page, but his gift of $3 Million to the pro-charter campaign in 2016 didn’t merit even a mention. 

But then relentless Maurice Cunningham discovered this:

“Klarman also is a part owner of the Fenway Sports Group, the Boston Red Sox parent company that is led by principal owner John Henry. Henry is also owner and publisher of The Boston Globe.”

Blood is thicker than water. Money is thicker than blood or water.

It is way past time that I name Maurice Cunningham to the honor roll of this Blog for his indefatigable sleuthing and pursuit of Dark Money. As always: Follow the money.

PS: To learn more about Stand for Children as a conduit for Dark Money and about Strategic Grant Partners read this post by Cunningham. 

*He explains:

“A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: I’ve failed to come up with a catchy name for the dark money funders so for now I’ve settled on “Financial Privatization Cabal.” Financial since most of the dark money is coming from the financial services industry. Privatization, because I believe their intention is to privatize public services. Cabal because it denotes a secret plot.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Boston, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Fake, Honor Roll, Massachusetts, Walton Foundation

The Corporate Plan to Prepare Our Children for a Life of Servitude

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2018 //
35

 

In this insightful and harrowing article, we can see clearly the contours of a devilish plan, hatched in the corridors of ALEC and other corporate-controlled entities. The centerpiece of the plan is the destruction and privatization of public education, which all of us own and paid for with our taxes.

Read it and get involved. Join the Networkfor Public Education. Join your local advocacy group. Never despair. Don’t stop fighting.

It begins like this:

It was the strike heard ‘round the country.

West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app. Their governor, billionaire coal baron Jim Justice, pledged to allow them no more than an annual 1% raise—effectively a pay cut considering inflation—in a state where teacher salaries ranked 48th lowest out of 50 states. In February 2018, they finally revolted: In a tense, nine-day work stoppage, they managed to wrest a 5% pay increase from the state. Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have now revolted in similar protests.

It’s the latest battle in a contest between two countervailing forces: one bent on reengineering America for the benefit of the wealthy, the other struggling to preserve dignity and security for ordinary people.

If the story turns out the way the Jim Justices desire, the children of a first-world country will henceforth be groomed for a third-world life.

Gordon Lafer, Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon, and Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, help illuminate why this is happening, who is behind it, and what’s at stake as the educational system that once united Americans and prepared them for a life of social and economic mobility is wiped out of existence.

The Plan: Lower People’s Expectations

When Lafer began to study the tsunami of corporate-backed legislation that swept the country in early 2011 in the wake of Citizens United—the 2010 Supreme Court decision that gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited sums to influence the political system—he wasn’t yet clear what was happening. In state after state, a pattern was emerging of highly coordinated campaigns to smash unions, shrink taxes for the wealthy, and cut public services. Headlines blamed globalization and technology for the squeeze on the majority of the population, but Lafer began to see something far more deliberate working behind the scenes: a hidden force that was well-funded, laser-focused, and astonishingly effective.

Lafer pored over the activities of business lobbying groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – funded by giant corporations including Walmart, Amazon.com, and Bank of America—that produces “model legislation” in areas its conservative members use to promote privatization. He studied the Koch network, a constellation of groups affiliated with billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. (Koch Industries is the country’s second-largest private company with business including crude oil supply and refining and chemical production). Again and again, he found that corporate-backed lobbyists were able to subvert the clear preferences of the public and their elected representatives in both parties. Of all the areas these lobbyists were able to influence, the policy campaign that netted the most laws passed, featured the most big players, and boasted the most effective organizations was public education. For these U.S. corporations, undermining the public school system was the Holy Grail.


After five years of research and the publication of The One Percent Solution, Lafer concluded that by lobbying to make changes like increasing class sizes, pushing for online instruction, lowering accreditation requirements for teachers, replacing public schools with privately-run charters, getting rid of publicly elected school boards and a host of other tactics, Big Business was aiming to dismantle public education.

The grand plan was even more ambitious. These titans of business wished to completely change the way Americans and their children viewed their life potential. Transforming education was the key.

 

 

 

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Koch Brothers

Massachusetts: Highest Court Says Charter Cap Is Constitutional

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2018 //
17

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled unanimously that the cap on charter schools is constitutional. 

It tossed out an effort by charter advocates to win in the judicial system what they lost at the polls in a state referendum in 2016, when the public voted against expanding the number of charter schools.

In an opinion issued Tuesday, Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court dismissed a complaint that the cap on the number of charter schools allowed to operate in state violates students’ rights under the state’s constitution.

The unanimous opinion, authored by Justice Kimberly Budd, affirmed a lower-court decision made in October 2016. It holds that even when public schools under-serve their students, that doesn’t mean state actors are failing in their constitutional duties — or that opening more charter schools is the only way to make it right.

The decision represents a third and possibly decisive setback for the proposal to lift the longstanding cap. In 2015, legislators decided against advancing Gov. Charlie Baker’s bill for more charter schools, instead leaving the choice to voters — who then voted it down by a 24-point margin in 2016.

It’s cause for disappointment and frustration among supporters of those schools, and for students and families who hoped to get in off their wait lists.

“Watching your own children have to suffer in a school that’s underperforming — and knowing that it’s the result of a political turf war… it’s crushing. It’s devastating.”

Keri Rodrigues

 Keri Rodrigues is one of those people. She’s an education activist who supported Question 2 in 2016. Now, she runs Massachusetts Parents United — an advocacy group supported in part by the pro-charter Walton Foundation. She has two sons who have tried and failed to get seats in a charter school. “Watching your own children have to suffer in a school that’s underperforming — and knowing that it’s the result of a political turf war… it’s crushing. It’s devastating…”

The plaintiffs argued that missed opportunity amounted to a violation of their shared right to an adequate public education, or to equal protection under the laws, as laid out in the state constitution.

The SJC opinion accepts the plaintiffs’ arguments that, under Massachusetts’ constitution, state leaders must provide all students with an “adequate education,” and that “the education provided at their schools is, at the moment, inadequate” based on testing data.

But the court rejected the plaintiffs’ conclusions. The opinion holds that state officials and lawmakers must be allowed to work to improve poorly-performing schools, and that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the state’s current approach — including oversight and takeover of chronically underperforming schools — couldn’t jump-start progress “over a reasonable period of time.”

Rodrigues wasn’t persuaded. “Over what period of time are we talking about? Because parents get roughly 12 years to get their kids an adequate education,” she said. “So are we just supposed to roll the dice and hope the commonwealth is able to figure this out?”

But the SJC opinion goes further. It argues that even if students’ constitutional rights were definitively being violated, it still wouldn’t mean the charter program must be expanded. The opinion states, “There is no constitutional entitlement to attend charter school,” and further, that the court is barred from enforcing any “fundamentally political” remedy of that kind.

The decision, in short, says that the state has an affirmative duty to improve low-performing schools, not an affirmative duty to open privately managed charter schools.

Rodrigues was state director for the now-defunct Families for Excellent Schools (also Walton-funded), which bundled millions of dollars for the failed “Yes on 2” charter expansion referendum; she is now executive director of Massachusetts Parents United, another astroturf group created by Walton and other charter advocacy organizations.

Unlike most parent organizations, Massachusetts Parents United started its life with $1.5 million in projected income and more on the way from the Waltons and other friends. 

The decision affirmed that the charter advocacy groups cannot rely upon the judicial system to overturn the 2016 referendum that said NO to more charter schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Matt Barnum: Part 2, Waltons’ Secret Memo: Why Charter Expansion Lost in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2018 //
7

 

Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat obtained additional portions of the postmortem analysis of why the corporate reformers lost in a state referendum to expand charter schools in Massachusetts (here is his first report). It makes for fascinating reading, both his summary and the original document itself. The Walton family and their allies invested millions in the referendum, hoping to increase the number of privately-managed charter schools in the Bay State. The Walton Education Coalition funded the postmortem, hoping to learn from the resounding defeat of the “Yes on 2” campaign.

The referendum was held in November 2016. “Yes on 2” advocated for expanding the number of charters in the state by 12 per year, anywhere in the state, indefinitely. “No on 2” warned that charters took funding away from local public schools. The YES campaign was funded by the Waltons, out-of-state financiers and corporate interests, and the New York City-based Families for Excellent Schools (FES). The NO campaign was funded mostly by the unions (including the National AFT and NEA) and small individual contributions. The YES campaign spent about $25 Million, the NO campaign spent about $15 Million. The successful message of the NO campaign boiled down to: “Do you support public schools or school privatization?”

If you read the original memo, you will see that the consulting firm really doesn’t understand why voters supported their local public schools and trusted teachers rather than the governor. Massachusetts public schools are the best in the nation, which raises the question of why the Waltons and FES decided this state was ready for privatization. Maybe they thought that if they could win in Massachusetts, they could win anywhere.

The second memo paints Massachusetts Teachers Association President Barbara Madeloni as a radical villain, because she outsmarted the charter lobbyists. She mobilized teachers and parents and did not compromise, and her side won. The consultants don’t understand or sympathize with her point of view, so they call her an “ideologue,” who “vowed to stop the corporate takeover of the public schools.” She beat the privatizers, and she rallied the public to save their public schools. I’d call her a successful strategist.

Their recommendation to the Waltons and other charter friendly groups is that in the next battle, they must activate charter teachers to sell their message, to counter the messaging of public school teachers. In liberal states, they said, the charter advocates must pretend to be liberals:

” Consider specific Democratic messages, or at least targeted messages, particularly in liberal states. Advocates should test owning the progressive mantle on education reform and charters: this is about social justice, civil rights, and giving kids a chance. While this is a problematic frame for the electorate as a whole, it may speak to the values of a Democratic electorate. The initial message recommendations to refrain from splintering the electorate was not wrong; this messaging discussing achievement gaps or inequality have sunk in other case studies. However, it could be the right approach for liberals in this new Administration.”

There is something inherently ironic—if not comical—about the notion of the far-right anti-union Walton Family donning the garb of “social justice” and “civil rights” to sell their non-union charter chains.

After the Question 2 referendum was defeated by a large margin, the Massachusetts campaign finance board fined Families for Excellent Schools $426,000 dollars for failing to reveal the names of its donors (“Dark Money”) and banned it from operating in Massachusetts for five years. Soon after, FES closed its doors in reaction to a #MeToo scandal involving its CEO.

Supporters of public schools can learn about the thinking of the charter lobbyists by reading these memos and preparing for the battles ahead, if the charter lobbyists ever again dare to compete in a referendum instead of their customary practice of giving campaign contributions to legislators and governors.

Maurice Cunningham, the University of Massachusetts political science professor who tracks Dark Money, said this on Twitter about the secret memo:

“My initial reading reaction. 1. Without Walton and Strategic Grant Partners money, there is no Q2. 2. Voters hate Walton money and corporate education interests – the whole Financial Privatization Cabal. 3. @bmadeloni was absolutely right. #MaEdu #mapoli #bospoli”

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teachers, Unions, Walton Foundation

Massachusetts: Charter Advocates Review Why They Lost State Referendum

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2018 //
11

 

A secret memo commissioned by the Walton Education Coalition sought to analyze why the well-funded charter advocates were beaten handily in a Massachusetts referendum in 2016 on expanding charter schools.

The memo says the opposition trusted teachers more than the governor. The opposition had a simple message: charters are funded at the expense of the local public schoools. The charter lobbyists thought they could threaten a referendum, and the legislature would cave and lift the charter cap to avoid a referendum. But the anti-charter forces refused to compromise and took it to the public.

Families for Excellent Schools, the hedge funders group, thought that the aggressive tactics they had used successfully in New York would work in Massachusetts. They didn’t, and FES was fined nearly half a million dollars for campaign finance violations (concealing the names of its donors) and banned from the Bay State for five years (FES disbanded soon afterwards).

What the analysis doesn’t acknowledge is that Massachusetts was a terrible choice to launch a charter campaign. On NAEP, it is the most successful state in the nation. It has a strong tradition of local control. Families are very attached to their town schools. Threaten the funding of the local public school, and you hit a hornets’ nest.

The pro-charter campaign was hurt too by the public recognition that it was fueled by out-of-state funding.

The opposition to charter expansion was well-organized and grassroots. The two national teachers unions spent millions, enough to stay competitive, but we’re outspent by the charter supporters by many more millions. Without their financial help (no dark money!), the charter industry would have owned the airwaves.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, led by Barbara Madeloni, organized teachers and collaborated with school committees to fight off the charter invasion. Almost every school committee in the state opposed Question 2.

Volunteers, parents, and activists turned out to defend public schools.

The only towns that voted to expand charters were affluent communities that expected they would never get a charter. Where charters already existed, the opposition ran strong because they knew there was less money for their town schools.

The defeat of Question 2 in Massachusetts was a very important milestone in the fight against privatization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Massachusetts, Privatization, Resistance, Walton Foundation

Good News! Colorado Democratic Party Overwhelmingly Passes Motion Against DFER

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2018 //
19

 

The group that calls itself “Democrats for Education Reform” represents hedge fund money and Wall Street and advocates for charter schools and high-stakes testing. Although it has no evident connection to education other than its name, it has funneled campaign contributions and Dark Money into state and local elections to support privatization of public schools. It has strongly backed test-based evaluations of teachers, despite the evidence against it.

Today, the Colorado Democratic Party voted on a minority report critical of DFER. The motion required a 2/3 voice vote. It passed easily.

The motion said:

”We oppose making Colorado’s public schools private, or run by private corporations, or segregated again through lobbying and campaign efforts of the organization called Democrats for Education Reform and demand that they immediately stop using the Party’s name, I.e., “Democrat” in their name.”

To learn about DFER, read this:

Click to access IntendedConsequencesofDFER.pdf

 

 

Categories Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER

Ed Berger: Arizona Government and Dark Money

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2018 //
3

Ed Berger, retired teacher, lives in Arizona and fights for the return of honest government.

He writes:

Arizona Government Does Not Match The Decency And Will Of Its People

We live in Arizona. We are decent, law abiding, citizens. So why is Arizona considered one of the most corrupt states in America? Why is Arizona often the example of how Democracy can be subverted? Why is our state out of sync with its population? What is wrong? Arizona government does not match the values of our citizens.
What can we do to make our elected representatives reflect the decency and will of the people? We must vote to remove those who corrupt the democratic process and their elected positions by accepting Dark Money.

Let’s examine a recent Senate/House vote. House Bill 2153 was passed into law over the objections of community leaders and citizens of all political parties and went into effect April 2, 2018. It prohibits any local government requirement to identify contributors to local political campaigns. Seventeen Senate members and thirty-three House members approved this measure and Governor Ducey signed it into law. This runs counter to initiatives by many communities acting in the public interest to expose Dark Money and its’ use to buy and place representatives and government leaders. They want to stop the covert, negative and destructive methods of oligarchs that bypass the citizen’s right to elect representatives they have vetted and chosen.

This is a current example of how the will of the people was ignored. To clean AZ government, we can study how representatives voted on key issues like this one, share their deeds, and get the bad ones gone. What We The People now have is a list of the seventeen senators and thirty-three house members who sold us out.

Prescott is still reeling from the effect of Dark Money in recent elections. In the race for District #1, few know that DeVos money (Dark Money) went to support a candidate this community rejected. With access to DeVos money and the use of gerrymandering, the citizen’s candidate was undermined and defeated. His opponent won and now owes DeVos bigtime. The recent mayoral election in Prescott is another example of how democracy is subverted by money and power. Those elected to represent us in the legislature are too often there because they owe allegiance to those who want our government to serve them, and not the people.

When one is aware of this fact, we can begin to understand how tens of millions of our taxpayer dollars have not only been mismanaged but have gone into the pockets of privatizers and profiteers. For many years, our legislature has passed and supported laws that do not allow accounting or transparency for how taxpayer public dollars are spent by charter schools. They have also done away with conflict of interest rules that would make it a criminal offence for legislators to use public money and position for personal gain. In addition, they have done away with democratically elected schools boards in favor of private corporate boards to oversee charter schools. Real public schools have elected school boards. But those who control the legislature have eliminated the tools of transparency and accountability that protect our investment in public education from being siphoned off from the needs of children and into the pockets of privateers.

This has been done to our state. Captive and bought members of the legislature have created uncounted millionaires by directing our money to friends, family, and those they support ideologically. This has been done out of pure greed. Ideologically it is done to starve and damage our public schools because they are “government schools” and have not yet been privatized for profit, not for kids. These are our schools, the ones over 80% of AZ citizens want to support and improve.

These are two on the many examples of the subversion of the democratic process. Yavapai County is reported to be a Republican stronghold. Some say people here always voted a straight “R” ticket. That may have been true years ago. Today Yavapai County is not Republican or Democrat or Independent. The citizens of this county have learned that the state government is not GOP, but rather a Koch, Goldwater Institute, APS, ALEC assembly of people who often describe themselves a Libertarians, which roughly translated means, ‘We have the right to rape, rip, and run if it serves us. We have the right to access for our personal gain the taxes citizens pay. We believe in privatizing all public resources, including prisons, schools and government functions.’ If one votes a straight “R” ticket what they are getting is a “Koch” ticket. Times have changed and now the legislature and governor are owned by forces that serve only themselves. Too often our politicians dance with the ones who ‘brung’ them.

So how do we win back the respect of other Americans and our decency as a people?

#1 We identify the legislators and political leaders that are owned by outside forces. We do this by examining their voting records and red tag all who have voted for laws that restrict financial accountability, shield members from conflicts of interest, and favor those who profit from privatizing prisons, schools, and public services.

#2 We share our information, educate our friends and neighbors, and support candidates that, regardless of political party affiliation, represent us and our community.

#3 We vote after vetting the candidates.

 

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Citizenship, Civics, Dark Money, Democracy, Koch Brothers

The Guardian: Secret Rightwing Strategy Guide to Discredit Teacher Strikes

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2018 //
14

 

The Guardian published a document prepared by a rightwing group that offers messaging advice to states about how to undercut teacher strikes. 

Peter Greene reviewed the “messaging guide” here. He writes: “The ‘messaging guide’ is only three pages long, but it includes specific ideas about how to fight back against these crazy teachers and their desire to be paid a decent wage and also work in decent facilities.”

The Guardian writes:

“The “messaging guide” is the brainchild of the State Policy Network (SPN), an alliance of 66 rightwing “ideas factories” that span every state in the nation. SPN uses its $80m war chest – funded by billionaire super-donors such as the Koch brothers and the Walton Family Foundation that flows from the Walmart fortune – to coordinate conservative strategy across the country.

“Another financial backer of SPN is the billionaire DeVos family of the Amway empire. Betsy DeVos is the current education secretary in the Trump administration.

LSPN’s previous campaigns have included a plan to “defund and defang” public sector unions. Now it is turning its firepower on the striking teachers.”

It doesn’t suggest an attack on collective bargaining because all the affected states are already “right to work.”

It doesn’t suggest attacking unions because not only are these states “right to work,” but the leadership of the strikes is grassroots.

It does say that state leaders should emphasize that children were being hurt, especially poor children. (So touching to hear this from rightwingers who fight the minimum wage and the expansion of Medicaid, which hurts the families of poor kids as well as the poor kids, ).

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Dark Money, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Propaganda, Resistance

Maurice Cunningham, part 2: The Curious Incident of Millions Arriving to Fund the Plutocrats’ Favorite Project

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2018 //
5

 

Maurice Cunningham is a treasure. He follows the money involved in efforts to privatize public schools in Massachusetts. In this post, he takes issue with the Boston Globe writer Scott Lehigh, who has a sentimental attachment to privately run charter schools.

Leigh mocks the idea that “corporate reformers” are hell-bent on privatization. Such were the “fevered imagines” of charter opponents, he writes.

Cunningham responds:

“As someone who accurately identitied that raging fever I’ll concede that “corporate” reformers may not be the best description. Rather it was the hedge fund plutocrats of the Financial Privatization Cabal who were most responsible for seeking the privatization of public education.”

He then posts the list of campaign contributions—all staggeringly large—made by Families for Excellent Schools to the Massachusetts referendum about charter expansion in 2016 that caused that organization to be fined nearly half a million dollars by state campaign finance officials, banned from the state for five years, and shuttered.

Cunningham writes:

“Why deem the “corporate” reformers the Financial Privatization Cabal? Because most of the money came from hedge fund and other financial services titans. They ardently seek privatization. And as they knew transparency would be the death of their plot, their strategy depended on a secret cabal.”

Before he finished writing, he noticed that the former director of the disgraced FES is now leading the “Massachusetts Parents Union” and has been invited by the state board to represent parents. That’s a good one!

“Just as I was picking up Mr. Lehigh’s column off my twitter feed came tweets that Keri Rodrigues, former state director of now Banned-in-Boston Families for Excellent Schools and present state director of Massachusetts Parents United is invited to represent parents at DESE. I confess I know little of this and won’t say anything about DESE because … read the disclaimer below.

“But as I wrote in Why Massachusetts Parents United?, MPU is a front for the Walton heirs and other plutocrats tied up in the 2016 privatization campaign.

“DESE’s promotion of the MPU state director is consistent with my argument in Why Massachusetts Parents United? in that the invitation confers legitimacy on the organization that may help it attract attention from the press and add members – all useful when it comes time for the Financial Privatization Cabal to offer up a “parents group” to call for more privatization, including charters.”

As readers here know, I usually refer to the Privatization moment as “corporate reformers,” but Cunningham says it is more accurate to call them the “Financial Privatization Cabal.”

What do you think?

His last bit of advice: Follow the money. Dark Money never sleeps. When a parent group pops up and suddenly has a million-dollar budget, look for the source of the funding.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization

Maurice Cunningham: Dark Money Returns to Massachusetts to Promote Charters (Again)

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2018 //
9

 

Maurice Cunningham is a political scientist in Massachusetts who follows the trail of Dark Money. “Dark Money” refers to groups that conceal their donors and that use phony front groups that pretend to be grassroots families and parents.

In 2016, the Bay State held a referendum on whether to expand charter schools, and the Dark Money flowed through a NYC group called Families for Excellent Schools. FES was a front for hedge fund managers, mostly from out-of-State. The pro-charter forces vastly outspent the teachers’ unions but the proposal was overwhelmingly defeated. It lost in every part of the state, e crept for a few affluent communities that never expected to see a charter school in their neighborhood. Most towns, especially those that already had charters, knew that the arrival of a charter meant budget cuts for their public schools, and they voted no.

After the election, state campaign finance officials punished Families for Excellent Schools for its lack of transparency. It fined the group nearly $500,000 and banned from Massachusetts for five years. Shortly afterwards, FES closed its doors.

But, Cunningham reports, the Dark Money has returned. 

First, it created a from group called Massachusetts Parents United, only three months after the 2016 election. This was supposed to be regular parents, right? But the money rolled in, more than any group of concerned parents could muster.

“Soon the plucky parents had a website, services of two political communications firms, several thousand members (so-claimed), and projected income of $1,500,000 and expenses of $800,000 for 2017. MPU operated under a sponsorship agreement with Education Reform Now, which bankrolls the millions that enables Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts to fertilize state politics with dark money. MPU’s state director, who also served in that capacity for Banned-in-Boston Families for Excellent Schools, is on the Advisory Council of DFER Massachusetts.”

Does your local parents’ group have that kind of money? I didn’t think so.

“In the Empty Bottle I spelled out some of the contributions made by MPU’s funders to the 2016 charters campaign. Let’s update that first with contributions from WalMart heirs. Jim Walton gave $1,125,000 into the Campaign for Fair Access to Quality Schools. Alice Walton provided $710,000 to the Yes on 2 Ballot Committee and slipped another $750,000 of dark money into the coffers of the now Banned-in-Boston Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy. Thus the Waltons spent down the inheritance by $2,585,000 for Question 2.

“But the Walton Family Foundation, a tax deductible organ of the Walton family, had been putting upstream money into the Massachusetts charters effort for years. From 2010 through 2016, WFF gave over $12,000,000 to Education Reform Now (the Walton family sustaining the funder of a Democratic front is, uh, what?). WFF gave nearly $14,000,000 to the collapsed-in-corruption Families for Excellent Schools, almost half of that in the 2015 run up to the ballot question. Across those years WFF slid over $900,000 to the Pioneer Institute.

“Then there is the Longfield Family Foundation and its benefactor Chuck Longfield. In Empty Bottle I noted that Chuck Longfield had contributed $125,000 to two pro-charter ballot committees. When OCPF forced the disbanded-in-disgrace Families for Excellent Schools to disclose its donors, it revealed that Longfield had given another $600,000 in dark money. He also contributed to the weird Mekka Smith situation, which was also bound up in charters.

“The Barr Foundation is the charitable foundation of Amos Hostetter, who funneled $2,000,000 in 2016 dark dollars through the invested-in-iniquity Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy.

“The largest giver of dark money to formed-in-fraudulence Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy was its office mate engorged-in-effluvia Families for Excellent Schools Inc., which laundered $3,700,000 through FESA to Great Schools Massachusetts. On May 26, 2016 the Davis Foundation sent $100,000 to FESI and on November 2, 2016 another $10,000, and also invested $20,000 in Pioneer for “Project to Expand Educational Opportunity in MA.”

“Charters were killed off in 2016, you say? In Washington state charters failed at the ballot box in 1996, 2000, and 2004 before squeaking by on a fourth try in 2012, and that was with the help of the Gates family. Privatizers play the long game. Money never sleeps.”

What do they want? Why spend so many millions?

The Dark Money club wants privatization. They want to undermine public schools in the most successful state in the nation.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Dark Money, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization, Walton Foundation
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