Maurice Cunningham: Questions for the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: Questions for the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: Questions for the “National Parents Union”

Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at U of Mass who specializes in following the money, especially Dark Money, where the donors are anonymous.

The Koch-Walton backed National Parents Union is experiencing turmoil at the top and severe mismanagement with two boards of directors featuring revolving directors and a disappeared co-founder.. 

The organization is holding a convening on May 15 and its members should demand some answers. 

Here are questions they should be asking the leadership. Any media member who would like to learn about who is pulling the strings at NPU, feel free. 

1. National Parents Union has two boards of directors, one board listed on the NPU webpage, and another on record with the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Corporations Division. The website board CONTINUE READING: Maurice Cunningham: Questions for the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: Who Got Suckered? Secretary Cardona or Readers of The74? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: Who Got Suckered? Secretary Cardona or Readers of The74? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: Who Got Suckered? Secretary Cardona or Readers of The74?

Maurice Cunningham is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts. His specialty is following the gobs of money poured into “education reform.” His exposes of Dark Money in the 2016 charter expansion referendum was a crucial element in turning the public against the referendum (you can read more about him in his blogs and in my book Slaying Goliath.)

In this post, published here for the first time, Professor Cunningham writes about the innocence or naïveté of Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, who met with a billionaire astroturf group and thought he was reaching out to ordinary parents and families.

Cunningham writes:

Who Got Suckered, Secretary Cardona or Readers of The74?

“The Pro-privatization education blog The74 recently published To Rebuild Trust with Families, Ed. Dept. Seeks Input from Outspoken Parents Group. The story purports to be about how Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona “seeks” the advice of parents and thus turns to the National Parents Union. But the CONTINUE READING: Maurice Cunningham: Who Got Suckered? Secretary Cardona or Readers of The74? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Paid For By . . . – Tennessee Education Report

Paid For By . . . – Tennessee Education Report

PAID FOR BY . . .

At the end of this nice, happy story welcoming a new reporter to the education beat at WPLN, there’s a very interesting sentence:

Nashville Public Radio thanks the Thorne Family Charitable Fund, the Scarlett Foundation, the HCA Healthcare Foundation, the Joe C. Davis Foundation and the Andrew Allen Foundation for their generous support of our education beat.

It’s great that the education beat has some solid financial support. What’s noteworthy, though, is that two of the five sponsors of education news are also hard core privatization advocates.

First, there’s the Scarlett Foundation. This group, headed up by Joe Scarlett, is solidly in the privatization camp. Plus, as the Scarlett Foundation’s page notes about their board chair:

He serves as chairman of the Scarlett Hotel Group and vice-chairman of the Beacon Center of Tennessee.

Yes, THAT Beacon Center – the conservative group pushing policy schemes like school CONTINUE READING: Paid For By . . . – Tennessee Education Report

IGNORANCE OR INTENTION – Dad Gone Wild

IGNORANCE OR INTENTION – Dad Gone Wild

IGNORANCE OR INTENTION

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

 

Most people enter into the education world through a desire to work with children and make a meaningful impact on the world’s future. We are greeted upon entry, by slogans like, “All children matter”, and “Children First.” Groups proliferate the scene with benign names like “Tennesseans for Student Success” and “Student’s First” and such. Lately, a newly founded non-profit with the moniker, Parents Defending Education is gobbling up headlines. Sounds great, until you take a peek behind the curtain and see some familiar faces.

Stay in the game long enough and you start to become a little cynical. You start to realize that serving all kids, translates into serving most kids, or some kids. Which kids fall into the bucket, largely seems to be the ones that generate the most income, both from private donors and federal programs. There is no payday in championing gifted children or those from wealthier families, but an executive director can make a great deal of money attaching their mission statement to an underserved population. For evidence, you just need to look at the salaries for ED’s of non-profits active in Tennessee. Salaries that far eclipse those of teachers and principals.

• John King, Education Trust, made $531,027 in 2018. Many of you know that Acting-US Secretary of Education Ian Rosenblum previously worked for EDuTrusrt but did you know that in 2018 he cleared a salary of $216,788?
• Elisa Villanueva Beard, Teach For America, in 2017 drew an annual salary of $493,836
• Daniel Weisberg, TNTP, in 2018 received $348,779 in compensation.
• David Mansouri, SCORE CEO, and Sharon Roberts, Chief Impact Officer, pulled in $313,295 and 272,808 respectively.
• Brent Easly, TNCAN, the year before he went to work for Governor Lee cleared roughly $170K.
• Candace McQueen, NIET, didn’t take over as Executive Director until last year but in 2018 her predecessor drew a salary of $402K
• Emily Freitag, Instruction Partners, in 2018 cleared $225K, willing to bet it’s a lot higher these days.

The tragic part of all of this is that the very students that are being used as payroll generators are CONTINUE READING: IGNORANCE OR INTENTION – Dad Gone Wild

MORE CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON – Dad Gone Wild

MORE CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON – Dad Gone Wild

MORE CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

“A leader is best
When people barely know he exists
Of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say, “We did this ourselves.” 
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ch

Hope y’all had a great Easter weekend. For us it was much needed opportunity to reconnect with family that we had spent significant time with since the onslaught of the pandemic. Based on my social media feeds, it was spent in a similar fashion for many of you.

The world of education policy continues to be an active one. With questions around testing, learning loss, and dark money continuing to swirl. Let’s dive in.

Currently making its way through the Tennessee General Assembly is a bill flying under the radar that could impact education policy. House Bill 159, known as the Personal Privacy Protection Act would prohibit the release of information for all 501(c) organizations, those holding nonprofit, tax-exempt status under the federal IRS code. The bill is not aimed specifically towards the education world, but it will have an impact. Hiding the money will only make it easier for those in the private sector to dismantle public education.

Over the last several weeks I’ve disclosed the influence of several non-profit education organizations that wield considerable influence over education policy in Tennessee. Groups like SCORE, TNTP, Education Trust, NEIT, and such. By looking at their tax filings, you can see some of where their money comes from, but that data lags behind by two years. HB 159 will only serve to CONTINUE READING: MORE CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON – Dad Gone Wild

Maurice Cunningham: The Rise of an Astroturf Rightwing “Parents” Group | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: The Rise of an Astroturf Rightwing “Parents” Group | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: The Rise of an Astroturf Rightwing “Parents” Group

Maurice Cunningham is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts. He specializes in unmasking Dark Money groups.

He writes:

Radical Right Ramps Up War on School Boards, Superintendents, Principals, and Teachers

A new professedly “grassroots” group called Parents Defending Education has joined the right wing assault on public education. It combines white supremacy with a vicious plan to launch personal attacks on elected officials, administrators, and teachers. Just another day in corporate education reform.  

This group says it is fighting to restore “healthy, non-political education for our kids.” What they mean is anything that critically examines America’s racial history or present. 1619 is out, Trump’s 1776 project to promote “patriotic education” is in. Ibram X. Kendi and anti-racism? Definitely out. Wally and the Beav, in. 

Parents Defending Education is a campaign to direct and manage attacks on educators who candidly CONTINUE READING: Maurice Cunningham: The Rise of an Astroturf Rightwing “Parents” Group | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Parents Defending Education: Astroturf Goes Hard Right

CURMUDGUCATION: Parents Defending Education: Astroturf Goes Hard Right

Parents Defending Education: Astroturf Goes Hard Right

Parents Defending Education has just popped onto the education policy landscape, and they have staked out their spot in the new battle to inculcate children with the Proper American Values.

They would like to sell themselves as a grassroots organization; there is no particular reason to believe that's true, and I'm going to refer you to this post from the indispensable Mercedes Schneider to see exactly how this group is the product of professional astro-turfers. So take a moment and go read her post before you finish this one. Go ahead--I'll wait.

So Dr. Schneider has laid out who these people are. I want to follow that up with a look at what they're up to. 

The PDE website (which, oddly enough, doesn't include the "parent" part in the URL) prominently lists as a motto "Empower. Expose. Engage." And this explanation:

Parents Defending Education is a national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists promoting harmful agendas. Through network and coalition building, investigative CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Parents Defending Education: Astroturf Goes Hard Right

Parents Defending Education: Prefab “Grassroots” | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Parents Defending Education: Prefab “Grassroots” | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Parents Defending Education: Prefab “Grassroots”

On March 30, 2021, a new ed-reform kid on the top-down block, Parents Defending Education, introduced itself to the public on Twitter as follows:

“Launch today.” That sounds very new– and very odd because this org purports to do the nonsensical– “build a grassroots army of parents.”

Grassroots is not “built” from the top down. But a new ed-reform org surely could exploit the term “grassroots” by having members in different locales so that it might engage in litigation in the name of a local, “grassroots” interest.

That is just what this come-lately ed-reform group appears to have done.

Eight days prior to announcing its “launch” on Twitter– on March 22, 2021– Parents Defending Education had already stepped into a New York education lawsuit about high school integration, positioning itself as eligible to “intervene as a defendant”— and making it sound as though the org– here identified as a nonprofit– is an established grassroots org– and therefore having a right to CONTINUE READING: Parents Defending Education: Prefab “Grassroots” | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Maurice Cunningham: How Did Ordinary Moms in Rhode Island Get the Money to Pay for a Poll? Hint: Dark Money | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: How Did Ordinary Moms in Rhode Island Get the Money to Pay for a Poll? Hint: Dark Money | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: How Did Ordinary Moms in Rhode Island Get the Money to Pay for a Poll? Hint: Dark Money

Maurice Cunningham is a professor political science at the University of Massachusetts who has developed a unique talent for exposing the workings of Dark Money in education. The usual source of Dark Money is the multi-billionaire Walton Family, but they are not alone. In this post, he reviews the remarkable story told by the media in Rhode Island. A group of ordinary moms got together to demand charter schools. They set up a website and commissioned a poll done by President Biden’s pollster. Where did the money come from? The media forgot to ask that question. The media’s lack of curiosity about the funding behind this group of moms is curious.

On February 25, five “frustrated mothers” organized to raise money for their passion: charter schools.

What we see here is quite common, a front purporting to be parents but actually funded and acting for wealthy CONTINUE READING: Maurice Cunningham: How Did Ordinary Moms in Rhode Island Get the Money to Pay for a Poll? Hint: Dark Money | Diane Ravitch's blog

solidaridad: Major victory over a corporate charter school chain and their trade association

solidaridad: Major victory over a corporate charter school chain and their trade association

Major victory over a corporate charter school chain and their trade association

 Adapted from my Twitter thread.

ON Tuesday, March 23, 2021 I got my second big win in court against a charter school corporation. It was also a major victory over their Califonria Charter Schools Association (“CCSA”) trade association, which tried to use this case to carve out immunity to the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”). I represented @DotKohlhaas in this action.

Here was my tweet from the day before, after skimming through the tentative:

My first win against a corporate charter school was a year ago as third chair in a suit to overturn a wrongful expulsion of a student of color. The Partnerships to Uplift Communities (“PUC”) charter chain (of convicted felon Ref Rodriguez fame) violated that student’s due process rights. Violated isn’t a strong enough word for what they did. PUC unilaterally changed the charges at the appeals hearing and branded the child as a terrorist in his permanent record. Under the tutelage of the brilliant partners at the law firm I was a part-timer at the time (I am currently transitioning to full time there), plus sage advice from @DrPrestonGreen, we built a strong case.

It was my argument that the charter corporation never proved specific intent — a crucial element to Ed. Code § 48900.7, as well as PUC’s glaring lack of notice afforded to the student, that saw the court overturn the wrongful expulsion and give the student their life back.

This latest case was a charter trying to hide all its dirty secrets by not CONTINUE READING: solidaridad: Major victory over a corporate charter school chain and their trade association

How a $25 million donation for summer schools got ensnared in San Francisco politics - Vox

How a $25 million donation for summer schools got ensnared in San Francisco politics - Vox

How a $25 million donation to help students got ensnared in politics

San Francisco is once again fighting over billionaires’ philanthropic power.

Billionaire philanthropy is once again on the defense in San Francisco, the home of many a tech billionaire.

The latest backlash centers on a city proposal to get 20,000 schoolchildren some in-person teaching and playtime this summer, after city public schools have been closed for more than a year during the pandemic. But a liberal lawmaker has temporarily derailed the initiative to raise questions about the involvement of a volunteer group that she worries is pushing a political agenda.

The saga is another flashpoint in the debate over the proper role of billionaire philanthropists — and their affiliated nonprofits — in society. And it is a window into how the city that is home to tech wealth is increasingly suspicious of civic projects from those tech leaders. Late last year, San Francisco officially condemned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for his errors at Facebook after he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $75 million to a local hospital.

Here’s what happened: Earlier this month, San Francisco announced that a foundation called Crankstart, funded by famous Sequoia venture capitalist Mike Moritz and his wife, Harriet Heyman, was donating $25 million to help start a city initiative to offer free summer school or day care programs to kids. The program would be aided by an outside advocacy group called TogetherSF that was formed last year to work on civic projects in the city and has also, separately, been funded by Crankstart. Crankstart brokered the arrangement between TogetherSF and the summer school program.

But TogetherSF’s involvement has become controversial — and is being cast by one San CONTINUE READING: How a $25 million donation for summer schools got ensnared in San Francisco politics - Vox

Maurice Cunningham: The Marketing of the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: The Marketing of the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maurice Cunningham: The Marketing of the “National Parents Union” 

Maurice Cunningham watches the flow of “Dark Money” into the privatization of public funding for schools. A professor of political science, he has recently followed the money trail of the “National Parents Union,” which he points out is neither “national,” nor “parents,” nor a “union.”

NPU markets itself as if it were a “grassroots” group, but it is funded by the Walton Family Foundation and Charles Koch and enjoys the high-priced assistance of Mercury Communications LLP to get its anti-public school, anti-union message into the national media. Mercury currently represents Teach for America and at one time represented Eva Moskowitz (who fired them).

With this expensive marketing, NPU presents itself as an authentic voice of parents.

Cunningham writes:

Here’s an example of the coverage from the New York Times: “National Parents Union, a collection of 200 advocacy organizations across 50 states representing parents from communities of color.” But there is no CONTINUE READING: Maurice Cunningham: The Marketing of the “National Parents Union” | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Jebucation Has New Five Year Plan

CURMUDGUCATION: Jebucation Has New Five Year Plan

Jebucation Has New Five Year Plan

Long long ago, when Jeb! Bush still had White House dreams, he cooked up a Floridian reform group, which then scaled up to national status as the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which has now become ExcelInEd. Headed up by Patty Levesque, the organization  remains a clearinghouse for education disruption ideas pushed by well-heeled, well-connected education amateurs. It is hard to pretend any more that these are serious people who have goals other than breaking up public education so that the private market can profit from the pieces. 

Their website is still chock full of carefully twisted stats (Florida is first in AP test participation!) and same old baloney talking points (US students rank 38th internationally in math on the PISA scores--which is of course right where they've always ranked). The message remains as always that public schools are failing and we must open education to the privateers who want access to all those sweet, sweet tax dollars. (It also includes some celebrity bad quotes).

The group is busy-- they push policy ideas out into the states and have been busy filing briefs in support of ESAs (the newest flavor of education voucher) and just generally supporting the privatization agenda whenever they can. And they put on an annual gathering of privatizers and profiteers called, seriously, EdPalooza.

Recently Levesque was interviewed by Rick Hess. As with his recent exit interview with Betsy DeVos, this is Hess being uncharacteristically soft and fuzzy, allowing his subject to spin her tale without ever questioning or challenging her story. The end result is illuminating only because it gives us an unvarnished picture of the alternate reality that Levesque wants to promote.

Levesque's account of what EIE has done is standard reformy fare-- they're "developed policy CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Jebucation Has New Five Year Plan

Maurice Cunningham - Massachusetts Parents United, National Parents Union, and the Christian Right - MassPoliticsProfs

Massachusetts Parents United, National Parents Union, and the Christian Right

Massachusetts Parents United, National Parents Union, and the Christian Right

Two of the important props of the far right in America are Christian conservatives and economic royalists like the Waltons and Charles Koch. Those ties are becoming evident in school privatization including in financial support the Massachusetts Parents United has offered to a Christian right group and in National Parents Union’s funding from a Koch-Walton joint venture that partners with a far right Christian home schooling network.

Here’s the Massachusetts Parents United $1,000 “sponsorship” from its Form 990 tax return for 2017:

 

 

 

Here are some headlines about National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and its leader Pastor Samuel Rodriguez from Right Wing Watch:

Samuel Rodriguez: New General in Global Anti-Gay Culture War

Samuel Rodriguez: Getting Conservative SCOTUS Trumps Immigration Reform

The Preachers on Trump’s Inaugural Podium (Pastor Rodriguez prayed at Trump’s inaugural).

Samuel Rodriguez Says Trump’s Supreme Court Will Save Religious Liberty

Sam Rodriguez Has ‘Disagreements’ With Harsh Anti-Immigrant Bill but Calls It a ‘Positive Development’ (also identifying Rodriguez as a “promoter of the Libre Initiative,” the Koch political outreach program to Latinos).

Samuel Rodriguez Joins Bid to Rebuild GOP Power in California

In short, Samuel Rodriguez and his National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference are cogs in the religious right’s alliance with the Republican Party.

The religious right-economic right connection is a component of conservative political power, as Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson recently argued in Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality. The Waltons and Charles Koch fund MPU’s allied organization National Parent Union through a joint venture called the VELA Education Fund. VELA announced a grant to NPU on August 3, 2020, NPU having established a track record of nearly seven months. VELA has also given CONTINUE READING: Massachusetts Parents United, National Parents Union, and the Christian Right