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Maurice Cunningham: Reporters Should Raise These Questions With the “National Parents Union”

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2024 //
3

Maurice Cunningham is a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts. He became expert on the subject of Dark Money in education while covering a state referendum on charter school expansion in Massachusetts in 2016. He noted at the time that the funding on behalf of authorizing more charter schools came from billionaires, many of them out of state. He noticed that while the charter expansion was overwhelmingly opposed by PTAs and local school boards, one parent organization, the “National Parents Union,” supported it. He checked into the NPU’s financials and discovered it had received large grants from the Walton Foundation. Walton is one of the biggest funders of charters in the nation. The referendum went down to a decisive defeat. But NPU carries on, advancing the cause of privatization.

Cunningham is the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.

NPU will hold its national conference starting April 9 in D.C. Maurice hopes that reporters will ask the following questions:

National Parents Union’s “#ParentPower2024.”

Some Questions for Journalists.

National Parents Union (NPU), a Koch and Walton funded phony “parents” groups, will hold its #ParentPower2024 meeting this week. For any journalists covering the meeting, here are some questions you should ask. 

1. A “union?” Can National Parents Union (NPU) name another “union” that accepts millions of dollars in donations from such notorious anti-union billionaires as the Walton family ($4,466,000 to affiliated Massachusetts Parents United (MPU) and NPU), John Arnold (his City Fund gave $1,028,500 in 2021-2022), and Charles Koch ($350,000 through a joint venture with the Waltons called the Vela Education Fund)?

2. All in the Family. Across NPU and the allied Massachusetts Parents United, Rodrigues and her husband Tim Langan compensated themselves $661,775 in 2022. What justifies paying them 22 percent of 2022 total revenues?

3. Organizing? NPU’s 2022 tax return lists $31,616 in expenditures for “community Organizing EV.” Why is so little spent on community organizing?

4. Sinking Financials. NPU and MPU went from $5,307,190 combined contributions in 2021 to $3,015,449 in 2022. What explains the steep decline in donations?

5. Rising Salaries. At NPU, despite contributions dropping in 2022 from 2021 levels, salaries rose from $1,729,503 to $2,035,201. Why?

6. Gravy Train Leaving the Station. NPU’s financial position is deteriorating while leadership compensation remains high. Why? 

7. Dueling Boards of Directors? NPU lists one set of board of directors on its website and an almost entirely different board as part of its annual report to the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Corporations division. Which is the real board? 

8. I Came to Say I Cannot Stay, I Really Must Be Going. Since NPU was founded in 2020 at least twenty-twodifferent individuals have been listed as board members, some with tenures as short as a few months. Why does the board turn over so much? 

9. Three Card Monte. In 2020, MPU made a grant to NPU of $170,000 for “contributions held for National Parents Union, Inc.” In 2021, MPU made a grant to NPU of $959,837 for “contributions held for National Parents Union, Inc.” In 2022, MPU made a grant to NPU of $167,622 for “contributions held for National Parents Union, Inc.” Why are such large sums being funneled through MPU? Is MPU concealing NPU’s donors?

10. Ghost members. Recently Rodrigues tweeted that NPU has “1600 affiliated organizations” but there is no proof of that and NPU has never provided a public accounting of affiliates. The only independent study of NPU’s claims in 2020 showed members were in the charter school industry. Why has NPU never released a list of its “affiliated organizations?

11. Bonus Round. Rodrigues and co-founder Alma Marquez were “elected” as president and treasurer in January 2020 for three year terms. Those terms have ended, why has there been no election of new officers? Marquez disappeared in just a few months and was replaced with Rodrigues’s husband, Tim Langan. What happened to Marquez?

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

Private Equity is Buying Up Hospitals, Squeezing Out Big Profits, Letting Them Die

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2024 //
21

I am more than a little touchy on the subject of for-profit takeovers of hospitals that serve the community. That happened in my neighborhood a few years back. The city sold a major hospital to a for-profit firm. The hospital eventually went bankrupt and was sold off and converted to other uses. This hospital saved my life in 1998, when I walked in to the emergency room, short of breath and limping. As it happened, I had an advanced pulmonary embolism. Had I not gone to the hospital, I would not have survived the night, said the pulmonary specialist the next morning.

Larry Edelman of The Boston Globe in his column called Trendlines tells the story of what happened to a small chain of hospitals that served high-needs communities:

The hound from hell

It was a match born of voracity and desperation, as many private equity buyouts are. Cerberus Capital Management hit a home run with Steward Health Care. But Steward may be about to go down swinging.

Rewind: In 2010, Cerberus agreed to bail out Caritas Christi Health Care, a struggling network of six Catholic hospitals serving mainly poorer communities in cities including Boston, Brockton, Fall River, and Methuen.

The New York firm paid $246 million in cash, assumed more than $200 million in pension liabilities, and promised to invest $400 million in the company, rechristened Steward Health Care.

When the deal was announced, a Cerberus executive told the Globe it was “a big win for the hard-working communities of Greater Boston.’’

Fast-forward: After a national expansion, Steward is on the ropes. Last week, the Globe’s Jessica Bartlett broke the news that the company — now owned by a group of physician-managers — is having trouble paying rent and may have to sell or close hospitals.

But the deal was a big win for Cerberus. It cashed out of Steward in early 2021, quadrupling its money with an $800 million gain, according to Bloomberg.

The backstory: Cerberus bought Caritas Christi four years after a blockbuster hospital deal: the 2006 leveraged buyout of HCA for $21 billion by Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts and Bain Capital of Boston.

The sheer size of the acquisition — and the involvement of two respected firms — supercharged a health care buyout binge that extended beyond hospitals to nursing homes, physician practices, and home health providers.

Cerberus jumps in: After taking a high-profile beating on its 2007 bet on Chrysler, Cerberus saw an opportunity to profit on a turnaround of the “St. Elsewhere”-esque Steward. The plan: buy up other hospitals around the country, deploy new technology, improve efficiency, control costs, and bill Medicare and Medicaid as aggressively as possible.

It was a vision adeptly articulated by Dr. Ralph de la Torre, Caritas’ chief executive officer who remained in charge under Cerberus.

But it was a tough slog for the cardiac surgeon. His expansion plans were thwarted, and Steward didn’t make any money until 2015, when a reduction in pension payments put it in the black.

The big breakthrough: The following year Steward sold its hospital properties for $1.2 billion to Medical Properties Trust, a real estate investment trust that also paid $50 million for a 5 percent stake in the company.

Steward, which leased the properties back from Alabama-based MPT, earmarked the proceeds to buy more hospitals and pay down debt. It also returned Cerberus’ initial investment, though the firm held on to a controlling stake in the company.

In effect, de la Torre had landed a new financial backer, letting Cerberus off the hook.

“We look forward to expanding our relationship with Steward in the years ahead,” MPT chief executive Edward K. Aldag Jr. said at the time.

And MPT did just that in 2017, writing a $1.4 billion check and buying an additional $100 million of Steward equity. De la Torre used the money to buy IASIS Healthcare, a $2 billion purchase that gave Steward 18 hospitals in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah, making it the largest for-profit chain in the country.

The next year de la Torre moved the company’s headquarters to Dallas, where taxes are lower and regulations lighter.

Minimal disclosure: As a private company, Steward isn’t required to make its financial statements public. Moreover, it has largely ignored Massachusetts requirements that it file detailed financial information on an annual basis.

But publicly traded MPT discloses some Steward financials because the chain is its largest tenant, accounting for about 20 percent of revenue. That’s how we know that Steward booked operating losses of $322 million in 2017 and $270 million in 2018.

Steward’s leaseback deal with MPT significantly boosted its expenses, but as Jessica reported, the health system blames its dire financial straits on rising interest rates and labor costs, an increasing Medicaid population, and difficulty collecting bills.

MPT has been hit hard by Steward’s woes. Its stock tumbled nearly 40 percent after it announced earlier this month that Steward was having trouble paying rent.

Moreover, COVID clobbered all hospitals. Despite receiving government pandemic aid and hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from MPT, Steward is strapped.

Good timing: Cerberus was out before the bedpan hit the fan.

In May 2020, it swapped its stake with Steward doctors in exchange for a note paying interest. Then, in January 2021, Steward borrowed $335 million from MPT to pay off the debt.

Cerberus was free and clear.

Parting thought: It’s not the only time the firm — named after the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades in Greek mythology — scored big on a company that went bust.

It did well on its buyout of Mervyn’s by selling off the department store chain’s real estate before it went bankrupt. And it recouped its investment and then some at arms maker Remington by paying itself a dividend before the company went broke. Such strategies are common in private equity.

You see, when firms like Cerberus do business, it’s often “heads I win, tails you lose.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Economics, For-Profit, Funding, Health, Massachusetts

Massachusetts, Top State on NAEP, Discovers a “Serious Literacy Crisis” Among Youngest Children

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2023 //
28

This is the most bizarre story I have read in many a day. The Boston Globe reported on a study showing a “serious literacy crisis” among the state’s youngest children. This is strange because Massachusetts regularly performs at the top of NAEP reading assessments.

The study was conducted by WestEd, a research group based in California. Apparently the researchers assessed the literacy skills of children in kindergarten, first and second grades. It is not surprising that most children in K and 1 and even 2 can’t read. They are only beginning to read.

The story starts:

A new state-commissioned study of young elementary students found that more than half showed early signs of reading difficulties — more evidence that the state has a serious literacy crisis, despite its reputation for educational excellence.

The report, released Friday, provides a first-of-its kind look at the reading skills of the state’s youngest children, whose reading prowess is not assessed by the state until the first MCAS exam in third grade.

The results are troubling: Nearly 30 percent of students in grades K-3 were at high risk of reading failure, and as many as 20 percent showed signs of having dyslexia, a language processing disorder that must be addressed with specialized reading instruction. Low-income students, those learning English or receiving special education services, Latino students, and Black students were most likely to experience reading struggles, according to researchers with WestEd, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that conducted the analysis.

The report suggests schools are not helping most struggling readers catch up: 60 percent of students who began the school year at risk of reading difficulties ended the school year in the same concerning position. But it found that younger students are much more likely to improve with extra help than older students are, a powerful argument for early intervention…

The extent of the state’s early literacy struggles have been laid bare annually in MCAS results, which, as the Globe’s Great Divide team previously reported, regularly show tens of thousands of students advancing from grade to grade without the reading skills they need to be successful.

The Globe investigation found nearly half of the state’s school districts last school year were using a reading curriculum the state considered “low quality.” A national nonprofit ranked Massachusetts this year in the bottom half of the nation in preparing educators to teach reading.

Massachusetts has not, as other states have, required evidence-based methods of reading instruction.

The “national nonprofit” that gave low scores to teacher education programs in the state is the National Council on Teacher Quality, a conservative group created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the George W. Bush administration. Its goal is to promote phonics. When NCTQ ranks Ed schools, it doesn’t visit them; it reads their catalogues.

If Massachusetts has a “serious literacy crisis,” the rest of the nation is a dumpster fire.

On NAEP, fourth grade students in Massachusetts typically score at or near the top in the nation. The percentage of students in Massachusetts who performed at or above NAEP Proficient in 2022 was 43%.

NAEP Proficient is equivalent to an A.

The only jurisdiction with higher scores in fourth grade was the Department of Defense schools. Five states had scores that were not significantly different from Massachusetts. Those six states outperformed 45 states and jurisdictions in fourth grade.

The point of the WestEd study seems to be that the state must push through a greater emphasis on phonics in teacher education programs, and that MCAS testing in grade 3 should start sooner.

The children who need extra help are low-income, limited-English, or in need of special services, etc. This is not news.

The “serious literacy crisis” looks and smells like a manufactured crisis. This report looks like a hit job on the state’s teachers and colleges of education. If the rest of the nation’s children matched the performance of those in Massachusetts, that would be cause for a national celebration.

Categories Childhood, Education Reform, Literacy, Massachusetts, NAEP, Standardized Testing

Maurice Cunningham: The Walton Family’s Investment in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2023 //
8

The Network for Public Education has its own blog, where it posts timely articles about the attacks on public schools and ongoing strife over privatization. This is an important article by Maurice Cunningham about the continuing interest of the Walton Family Foundation in Massachusetts. Walton (and other billionaires) tried but failed to win a state referendum to allow unlimited expansion of charter schools in 2016; Maurice Cunningham played an important role by exposing the Dark Money behind the referendum, which was pitched as “saving poor minority kids from failing public schools.” When school boards, civil rights groups, teachers’ unions, parent associations and other friends of public schools saw who was paying the bills, they overwhelmingly defeated the referendum. It would have been quite a coup to plant the flag for privatization in Massachusetts, the birthplace of Horace Mann.

Maurice Cunningham: Banned in Boston (Globe): the Walton Family’s 2021 Political Team

Maurice Cunningham is a retired professor and experienced tracker of dark and murky money in education politics. Periodically he rolls out some of the information that some media outlets never quite get around to publishing.

We all love us some Market Basket so imagine if the Walton family of Arkansas (d/b/a WalMart) bankrolled a takeover of our local grocer! News coverage would be constant—the Globe, the two NPR radio stations, local TV descending on shoppers to ask about their favorite possum pie recipes (it’s an Arkansas delicacy).  But the Waltons spend millions to privatize Massachusetts public schools and what do we get for coverage? Bupkis.

So read on if you dare, you’ll see this information nowhere else, the super-secret 2021 WALTON POLITICAL TEAM!

What is the 2021 Walton political team? It is America’s wealthiest family underwriting fronts that seek to influence government to achieve the policy goal of school privatization. As political scientists Kristin A. Goss and Jeffrey M. Berry teach us philanthropies sometimes act as interest groups. This political spending constitutes, as Robert Reich has written in Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing and How It Can Do Better, a little recognized and unaccountable form of oligarchic power.

The National Parents Union is one of his favorite groups to track, and he’s adding another to the mix.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! Because I’ve been leaving Educators for Excellence out of these equations. E4E is a billionaire funded “teacher” house operation intended to undermine real democratic unions. Diane Ravitch explains E4E here: “It is funded by the reactionary anti-union Walton Family Foundation, the Rightwing William E. Simon Foundation, the anti-union Bodman Foundation, and the Arnold Foundation, which wants to eliminate pensions.” From 2017-2021 E4E took in $5,495,000 from the Waltons, some of which probably found its way to Boston.

As to that asterisk in 2020 the Waltons sent $400,000 to Massachusetts Parents United to establish National Parents Union, installing MPU  president Keri Rodrigues as co-founder (the other co-founder mysteriously disappeared, to be replaced as treasurer my Rodrigues’s husband). In 2021 the Waltons duked NPU another $1,200,000.

I did a search for “Walton Family Foundation” from 2017-present in the Boston Globe archives and found only five references[1] for Walton Family Foundation. None covered Massachusetts WFF’s political largess but for one letter to the editor (in response to a letter from NPU/MPU/Walton agent Keri Rodrigues) and a snippet from AP. Except . . .

For a 2021 op-ed by free-lance journalist Amy Crawford titled Do-it-yourself education is on the rise. Crawford offers a big plug for Rodrigues and wrote that WFF “channeled $700,000 into direct grants (to NPU) for technology, training, and supplies for homeschooling families, cooperatives, and learning pods, in which families pool resources to hire a private teacher.” But what I think Crawford meant was the $700,000 invested in NPU by the Vela Fund, a joint venture of the Waltons and Charles Koch. Both the Waltons and Koch seek the privatization of public schools.

The post is filled with detail and specifics of particular interest to folks who follow education in Massachusetts.

Bottom line: The Waltons spend millions to influence education policy in Massachusetts and the Globe not only keeps its readers in the dark about that but promotes DFER and Rodrigues/National Parents Union/Massachusetts Parents United as authentic voices of Democrats and parents.

Read the full post here. 

You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/maurice-cunningham-banned-in-boston-globe-the-walton-familys-2021-political-team/

———-

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Hoax, Massachusetts, Parents, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Unions

Massachusetts: State Board Approves Controversial Charter for Worcester

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2023 //
55

The state board of education in Massachettts approved a new charter for Worcester that plans to siphon state funds to subsidize a museum, Old Sturbridge Village.

Local officials, including the mayor, opposed the new charter. It was supported by officials from other charter schools and from Old Sturbridge Village.

Concerns included nearly $7 million that would be taken from the Worcester Public School district’s budget; that the school would act as a revenue stream for Old Sturbridge Village; and that it would not provide anything new that the Worcester Public School district does not already offer to its students.

Ties to Diocese of Worcester

Mailman [a school committee member] raised concerns over the school’s ties to the Diocese of Worcester, with which it has a lease agreement at 81 Plantation St., where the school would be located upon opening, and how that could impact things like sex education curriculum and treatment of LGBTQ+ students.

Concerns had been raised previously about the lease agreement and that it would not allow the school to teach material that is “inconsistent with the doctrines or teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, ” in the building.

Louise Burrell, a parent from Worcester who said she was speaking on behalf of other parents, said she was concerned that the organization behind the proposed school has not had any contact with families in the district.

She also had concerns about how the budget drain would exacerbate increased class sizes and staffing shortages, and have a negative impact on vulnerable students, particularly those who are Black, Indigenous or other persons of color.

Who benefits? Not the vast majority of children in Worcester. They will have larger classes so that a charter can choose the 350 students it wants.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: Block the Worcester Charter School

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2023 //
4

Parents and educators in Worcester, Massachusetts, are outraged that the State Cimmissioner of Education Jeff Riley has recommended state approval of thexWorcester Cultural Academy. Its sponsors have openly admitted that revenues from the school will be used to subsidize another cultural institution, Old Sturbridge Village. This is downright bizarre. If the state wants to subsidize Old Sturbridge Village, it should do so directly, without diverting pupils and money from the Worcester public schools.

Citizens for Public Schools released this statement:

Citizens for Public Schools calls on state officials to reject the proposal from Worcester Cultural Academy to create a new charter school in Worcester.

We ask Commissioner Jeff Riley to withdraw his favorable recommendation, Gov. Maura Healey and Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler to oppose the proposal, and the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to reject it if Commissioner Riley does not withdraw it.

CPS was among the vast majority of individuals and groups who submitted public comment against the proposal, comments that were ignored in Commissioner Riley’s favorable recommendation.

Worcester educators have provided detailed criticism of the curriculum and other aspects of the proposal, and pointed out the harm it would do to children in Worcester Public Schools that will lose many millions of dollars to the new charter if it is approved.

But the application also raises an issue that has nothing to do with the benefits or harm of charter schools. The sponsors openly say they plan to use public education funds to “safeguard” the finances of a private organization, Old Sturbridge Village.

“Our [charter] academies will provide reliable, contractual revenue to the museum, safeguarding us against fluctuations in uncontrollable factors that impact admission revenue,” says the Old Sturbridge Village 2022 annual report.

And about that contract: By the fifth year, the proposal is to turn over nearly half a million dollars a year to Old Sturbridge Village for financial services to one small school.

The Worcester School Committee is meeting today to ask the state Inspector General and Auditor to look into that arrangement.

Voting against the Sturbridge charter proposal tomorrow would make a strong statement that the state board, established to support public education, is working to protect and not harm our state’s children.

Vote no.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Massachusetts

Boston: Mayoral Control Is the Wrong Answer

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2022 //
31

Retired teacher Christine Langhoff calls out the editorial board of The Boston Globe, which advocates for mayoral control of the schools, despite the wishes of the citizenry. Langhoff is right. Mayoral control is undemocratic, and it does not have a record of success. The mayor is not an educator. She or he may stack the leadership of the school system with cronies or—best case scenario—clueless business-school graduates. Mayoral control was tried and failed in Detroit and Chicago. New York City has had mayoral control since 2002 and that political arrangement has increased the number of charter schools, closed scores of schools, destabilized neighborhoods, and produced no notable improvements.

Langhoff writes:

Last year, 80% of Boston voters approved an elected school committee (a campaign that owes much of its organizing to a presence on Twitter, by the way). Now the process is underway, as the state would have to approve such a move.

This morning, the Boston Globe has published a disgusting editorial, calling for the abolition of any school board in the capital city. Reed Hastings would be proud. Who cares what citizens want, when the billionaires hellbent on privatization want something else?

“There are certainly problems with the city’s current school governance system, in which the mayor appoints all members of the seven-person school committee. But if the city is to overhaul school governance, the way forward shouldn’t be to switch to a popularly elected school committee — an antiquated way of managing schools in the 21st century. Instead, Boston should get rid of the body and centralize control of the schools in the mayor’s office.” (Boston Globe)

And while the Supreme Court looks to originalism to undermine our rights, The Globe (or more likely the Barr Foundation, to whom the newspaper of record outsources its education coverage) would throw out centuries of history of governing public schools in Massachusetts:

“Ending a school committee may seem radical, since local school board elections are so ingrained in American tradition. But the local school board, and its considerable power over the education of children in a geographic area, is a particularly North American phenomenon, and something of an accident of history. The colony of Massachusetts required towns to establish and pay for schools in 1647, in a law known as the Old Deluder Satan Act, and local control of schools — and local responsibility for funding them — has endured since.” (Boston Globe)

Funny, I doubt the same people would call for dissolving all school boards across the state, especially not in those wealthy towns where these writers likely live, and whose elected school boards they serve on.

Categories Accountability, Boston, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Reform, Massachusetts

Maurice Cunningham Responds to Rightwing Group Harassing Schools

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2022 //
35

The Boston Globe wrote about the activities of a Dark Money group called Parents Defending Education, which has filed lawsuits against the public schools in Wellesley and Newton in their quest to ban books and cleanse the schools of teaching about racism and gender.

Maurice Cunningham wrote a letter to the Globe explaining the reason for the harassment. He thinks their goal is intimidation. He’s right. But there is more. I think their goal is to undermine confidence in public schools and build support for privatization.

He wrote:

LETTERS

In its challenges to schools, group’s object lesson is intimidation

Updated November 18, 2022, 2:30 a.m.

Moms for Liberty, represented at an event last month in Vero Beach, Fla., is among the groups associated with Parents Defending Education, which has been promoting conservative values in education and challenging school districts in court.

Re “Schools wary as nonprofit targets teaching: Right-leaning group’s complaints cite bias in lessons on gender, race, sexuality” (Page A1, Nov. 15): Parents Defending Education is an obedient franchise of right-wing interests, including Charles Koch and the Council for National Policy, that are working to destroy public education.

Legal actions such as Parents Defending Education’s civil rights complaint against the Newton Public Schools and its lawsuit against Wellesley Public Schools are meant to generate publicity and foster intimidation. As the Globe has reported previously, the group’s civil rights “complaints likely will go nowhere.” The lawsuit settled on terms favorable to Wellesley.

However, Parents Defending Education isn’t after legal recourse; it’s after harassment. Wellesley School Superintendent David Lussier said he has received “obscene” and “awful” e-mails from people connected to the group. In December 2021, the Globe reported that two Black school principals in Newton had received “racist and confrontational” messages after the right-wing publisher Breitbart published an article misrepresenting how the principals’ schools were handling lessons about the verdicts in the trials of Kyle Rittenhouse and the men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery. Breitbart’s story was framed by Parents Defending Education.

Racist and obscene messages menacing educators are not an unfortunate consequence of Parents Defending Education’s machinations; they are entirely foreseeable.

Maurice T. Cunningham

Cambridge

The writer is the author of “Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.” He is a retired associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a former state assistant attorney general in Massachusetts.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Curriculum, Evil, Extremism, Fake, Fascism, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: Rightwing Groups Attack Public Schools for Diversity Policies

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2022 //
18

We have been following the activities of various rightwing groups that purport to represent parents. Many if not all are funded by Dark Money, meaning their funders are anonymous. “Parents Defending Education” is now active in Massachusetts, suing districts for events related to race, gender, and sexual orientation. As the article notes, PDE has a staff of 13, some with a Koch background, and is represented by a Trump-connected lawyer. The goal of such groups is to undermine public confidence in public schools and in the judgment of professional educators. The ultimate goal is to heighten the teacher shortage and encourage privatization of schools.

The Boston Globe story begins:

An increasingly active right-leaning non-profit called Parents Defending Education filed a federal civil rights complaint against Newton North High School last month, alleging that a student-led theater production broke the law by limiting auditions to people of color only.


The same group sued Wellesley Public Schools last year for alleged illegal discrimination when Wellesley High School hosted a forum for Asian students and students of color to discuss a mass shooting at an Asian massage parlor in Atlanta. The teacher who organized the session wrote that it was “not for students who identify only as White.”


So far, the national group has identified 43 “incidents” in which they say Massachusetts schools inappropriately – or even illegally – taught students about race, sexual orientation or gender, setting school districts across the Commonwealth on edge that they might be sued next.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before in all my years here,” said Wellesley School Superintendent David Lussier, who settled the lawsuit with the organization in February. “They try to go after superintendents and get people fired.”


Parents Defending Education did not return repeated requests for comment, but supporters say the group offers a vital counterweight to an education system steeped in liberal values.


“I think it’s good because, for a long time, education has been very one-sided,” said Jennifer McWilliams, a consultant to Parents Defending Education who runs her own advocacy group in Indiana. “Schools have decided that they need to teach children morals, values, attitude and worldview over academics.”


The two-year-old organization, based in Washington D.C., urges parents across the country to report incidents in which they believe schools are dividing students on racial lines or inappropriately teaching students about sex or gender roles. The group states on its website that education must be based on “scholarship and facts” and says ethnic studies divides “children into oppressor and ‘oppressed’ groups,” while teaching white students “guilt and shame.”

And the organization has a sizable, well-connected staff to promote their agenda. Parents Defending Education’s website lists 13 staff members including Nicole Neily, former president of an organization affiliated with the Koch Brothers called Speech First and Aimee Viana, a former Trump Administration appointee.


Schools have long been battlegrounds in the nation’s culture wars, but experts say Parents Defending Education marks something new: an attempt to nationalize the agenda. The group has been promoting conservative values across the country, enlisting local groups with names like Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education along the way.


“We see increased coordination, national coordination among groups of all political stripes and partisan stripes, thanks to social media,” said Meira Levinson, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. “The right more than the left seems to have mastered techniques of developing language that then can be replicated in legislation, or policy across different municipalities and state governments.”

For Massachusetts educators facing criticism from Parents Defending Education, it suddenly feels like the group is everywhere. The group criticized Brookline schools in April after teachers organized a walkout to protest a Florida measure opponents have characterized as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
In June, the organization condemned Milton for teaching a lesson about the country’s first openly gay politician Harvey Milk and the importance of the letters LGBTQ.


“Who the hell wants to go into this profession anymore if this is going to be the type of community that we’re serving and the type of pressure that we’re going to experience,” Wellesley Educators Association President Kyle Gekopi said. “It’s really been forcing a lot of people to question their choices.”


Most recently, Parents Defending Education filed a federal civil rights complaint on Oct. 4 against Newton North High School.


The group alleged to the United States Department of Education that the school violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Both are meant to protect people from discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. That protection extends to white students, they say.


Parents Defending Education claims the school’s student-led production, “Lost and Found: Stories of People of Color by People of Color,” restricted auditions to only students of color. The show, which organizers described as “a no-cut, cabaret-style show for students of color,” was meant to “provide a safe community space for students of color to express themselves through the performing arts.”


But Newton Public Schools put out a statement stressing that “no one is turned away or excluded from participating” in the play.


Educators far beyond Newton are nervously watching the case unfold. Brian Fitzgerald, president of the Plymouth County Education Association, said Parents Defending Education remind him of activists in past decades who have fought to curtail sex education, making it difficult to teach students about health.


“My fear is that they’re going to impact the ability of a student to learn,” Fitzgerald said.

Categories Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Fascism, Koch Brothers, Massachusetts

U.S. Department of Education Invites Astroturf “Parent” Groups to Join Advisory Council

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2022 //
16

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, is a specialist on the subject of Dark Money. That’s money given to a group or campaign where the donor’s name is hidden. His most recent book is Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.

Cunningham was instrumental in the defeat of a referendum in Massachusetts in 2016 to expand the number of charter schools. Early polling showed it would pass easily. But Cunningham dug into the funders and discovered that the proposition was funded by billionaires, including the Waltons and Bloomberg. He learned of an astroturf parent group called the National Parents Union, funded by the Waltons to promote charters and pretend there was a huge parent demand for them. The proposition was overwhelmingly defeated.

Imagine his surprise when he learned recently that the U.S. Department of Education was creating a Nation Parents & Families Council, and the National Parents Union was a member. He wrote to Secretary Miguel Cardona to express his concern that NPU was a Walton-funded astroturf group whose goal was to discredit public schools and promote charter schools.

He received a boilerplate response from the U.S. Department of Education’s communications office, dismissing his concerns.

Maurice T. Cunningham Maurice.Cunningham153@gmail.com


Dear Mr. Cunningham,
August 1, 2022


Thank you for your email to Secretary Miguel Cardona regarding National Parents Union (NPU) representation on the Department of Education’s (the Department) National Parents & Families Engagement Council (the Council). Your letter has been forwarded to the Office of Communications and Outreach and I am pleased to respond.
The Department acknowledges your concern and appreciates the in-depth information shared from your research regarding NPU. The Council is an opportunity for the Department to listen, learn and engage families and caregivers and will be a channel for parents and families to constructively participate in their children’s education. The goal of the Council is to be reflective of the diversity of the country and our public schools and the Department is open and accepting of all parent voices.
Again, thank you for your concern regarding organizations participating on the Council. Please know that the Department’s commitment to all parents, and their crucial role in their children’s education, is unwavering. The Secretary and staff here at the Department will continue to not just listen to parents but seek out their counsel and feedback because a school community works best when parents and educators are working together.
Sincerely,
/S/
Kelly Leon
Press Secretary, Office of Communications and Outreach, Delegated the Authority to Perform the
Functions and Duties of the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Communications and Outreach

Undeterred, Cunningham wrote another letter, going into greater detail.

MAURICE T. CUNNINGHAM, PhD, JD

August 16, 2022

The Honorable Miguel Cardona

Secretary of Education
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20202

Ms. Kelly Leon, Press Secretary, Office of Communications and Outreach

U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20202

Dear Secretary Cardona and Ms. Leon:

I am in receipt of Ms. Leon’s August 1, 2022 reply to my letter to Secretary Cardona of June 28, 2022 in which I detail some of my research showing that National Parents Union does not belong on the Department of Education’s National Parents and Families Engagement Council. Ms. Leon’s response, which simply recites boilerplate about the council seeking to solicit the views of parent, is disappointing and inadequate. National Parents Union is not a parents’ organization at all. That’s the point.

I would have thought that an organization like NPU that was founded in 2020 and almost immediately received $700,000 in funding from the Vela Education Fund, a joint venture of the Charles Koch Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, might elicit DOE’s curiosity as to NPU’s authenticity. The WFF and individual Walton family members have been involved in school privatization efforts for years. WalMart, the company inherited by the family, is one of the most virulently anti-labor corporations in the world. As the labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein writes, WFF is “the single largest source of funding for the ‘school choice’ movement and a powerful advocate of charter schools and voucher initiatives.” The Waltons’ support for privatization is an entirely ideological project, based on a desire to enhance the social and cultural value of a free market in which government is weak while public goods like . . . education . . . are the fodder for entrepreneurial transformation. . . . Since public schools are by far the most pervasive of public institutions, and highly unionized to boot, this “$700-plus-billion-a-year industry”—John Walton’s phrase—has been a good place to start.

Charles Koch came to K-12 privatization only in recent years, announcing his intentions in a 2018 Koch Seminar in which another Koch network member ($100,000 required simply to attend) called K-12 privatization “low-hanging fruit.” As reported by the Washington Post’s James Hohmann, “Making a long-term play, the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and his like-minded friends on the right are increasingly focused on melding the minds of the next generation by making massive, targeted investments in both K-12 and higher education.” The Koch network “dreamed . . . of breaking the teachers unions.” Charles Koch, skeptical for years about impacting K-12, had a Koch Industries vice-president named Meredith Olson investigate, and her strategic scheme spurred him on.

Meredith Olson is also important because by June 2019 Koch and WFF (both members of Stand Together) were announcing matching $5 million investments in a joint venture named “4.0”to “transform America’s education system” in their corporate image. Ms. Olson was K-12 Initiative Vice President at Stand Together. More importantly for considering the legitimacy of NPU, Ms. Olson is CEO and a board member of Vela Education Foundation. As her LinkedIn page shows, Ms. Olson is an oil and gas executive. She has no background in or understanding of education. She would have been responsible for the $700,000grant Vela made in August 2020 to NPU—an eight month old organization with no track record in grants administration.

Charles Koch’s “interest” in education was discussed on the podcast “Have You Heard” by Christopher Leonard, author of the best-selling Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America. Leonard described Charles Koch, like the Waltons, as an ideological libertarian. Leonard confirmed Koch’s intense anti-unionism and continued: “when you have public education … one of the biggest problems for the libertarians is that it’s funded through taxes. . . they see taxation truly as a form of of (sic) theft and robbery.” An extensive remark by Leonard is worth your careful consideration:

Know what the blueprint is. The Koch influence machine is multifaceted and complex and I am just telling you in a very honest way, there’s a huge difference between the marketing materials produced by Americans for Prosperity (Koch’s political organization, a parallel to NPU) and the behind the scenes actual politicalphilosophy. There’s a huge difference. And here’s the actual political philosophy. Government is bad. Public education must be destroyed for the good of all American citizens in this view.

So the ultimate goal is to dismantle the public education system entirely and replace it with a privately run education system, which the operatives in this group believe in a sincere way is better for everybody. Now, whether you agree with that or not as the big question, but we cannot have any doubt, there’s going to be a lot of glossy marketing materials about opportunity, innovation, efficiency. At its core though the the (sic) network seeks to dismantle the public education system because they see it as destructive. So that is what’s the actual aim of this group. And don’t let them tell you anything different.

One person who is not fooled by the Koch network’s PR machine is Charles Siler and that is because he was once part of it as a lobbyist and communications expert for the Goldwater Institute and Foundation for Government Accountability. Siler describes his former bosses: “Their ideal is a world with as minimal public infrastructure and investment as possible. They want the weakest and leanest government possible in order to protect the interests of a few wealthy individuals and families . . .” Siler describes one public relations technique as the “human shield.” Privatizers front a vulnerable and politically sympathetic population to protect them from progressive criticisms. They also understand that public schools are enormously popular. Thus, their proxies employ a steady drumbeat of messaging about “failing schools.” The goals are the same: destroy unions, strangle public schools, and privatizeeducation.

National Parents Union is a vehicle for the plans of the Waltons and Charles Koch. It presents as representing parents of color in search of a better life for their children, right out of the playbook Siler describes. The NPU team is drawn from alumni of the failed Families for Excellent Schools/Great Schools Massachusetts operations in New York and Massachusetts and as I explain in Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization FES was in reality the surrogate for Boston hedge funders and yes, the Waltons. NPU has used the Vela money to fund homeschooling pods that weaken public schools. At nearly every media opportunity, NPU spokespersons parrot the “failing schools” script.

Is there any conceivable reason to believe that National Parents Union is the blessed exception to the Waltons’ and Charles Koch’s laser-like focus on destroying public education? As Siler and Leonard teach us, DOE must ignore the elaborate marketing blitz that NPU can deploy and recognize NPU for what it is: an agent of wealthy libertarians with a wildly different and unpopular prescription for what is good for parents and children.

I understand that the council is on hold pending litigation brought by among others Parents Defending Education. As I explained in my letter of June 28, PDE is also a franchise in Charles Koch’s attack on public education. It is in alliance with Moms for Liberty, created by the right wing directorate Council for National Policy; and with Fight for Schools and Families, also a plaintiff in the litigation and headed by a former Trump administration and Republican Party communications executive. Should PDE prevail in its lawsuit and gain a seat on the council that would give Koch two seats on it. Even Betsy DeVos would blush.

The Department of Education should rescind its offer to National Parents Union to join the National Parents and Families Engagement Council.

Respectfully submitted,

Maurice T. Cunningham

Associate Professor (retired)

Department of Political Science

University of Massachusetts at Boston

cc: The Honorable Martin J. Walsh

Secretary of Labor

You can see the writing on the wall. All the astroturf parent groups will demand a place at the table. They fought masking, they fought vaccines, now they fight teaching about racism and gender, and they demand gag orders and book banning.

Will Secretary Cardona invite them to join his Council?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Dark Money, Education Industry, Fake, Koch Brothers, Massachusetts, Parent Groups, U.S. Department of Education
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