Arkansas Billionaires Fight to Change Massachusetts Education Policy.” Interesting headline, and true.
No Walton family of Arkansas, no Massachusetts Parents United. No Walton family of Arkansas, no Democrats for Education Reform of Massachusetts. It’s that simple. But the Boston Globe and MassLive, among others, simply ignore that fact. It’s the politics of pretending.
Readers deserve accurate descriptions about interest groups in political stories but they aren’t getting that from Boston Globe or MassLive’s coverage of the education funding debate.
Most of the “conflict” in the education bill story is ginned up by fronts doing the bidding of the Walton family. Friday’s MassLive story Education Reformers Angry That Massachusetts Senate Bill Watered Down Accountability Standards describes some of the actors in the “conflict”:
That’s fine. Readers understand what teachers’ unions are and their advocacy position. Next:
Also fine. A business-backed group named Business Alliance. MBAE is properly identified in the Globe story too. But–aha–The Waltons put $200,000 into MBAE in 2017 and $150,000 in 2018.
Pretty clear on Fund Our Future, right?
By the way, the education bill is a huge reform to the existing law, but to MassLive somehow those supporting that reform are not “reformers” but those opposing part of it are “reformers.” Explain?
MassLive really falls apart describing two groups that are fronts for the interests of the Walton family heirs of the Wal-Mart mega-fortune. Here they are:
The Globe doesn’t do much better in Senate Changes Chip Away at Broad Support for Beacon Hill Education Bill. To them MPU is an “advocacy group” and DFER MA “is a pro-charter school organization.”
Isn’t it relevant to readers that these two groups actually are funded—millions of dollars–by the Waltons? I think so and I offered more accurate descriptions in Naming Rights, free for use by any media outlet:
Democrats for Education Reform, which was founded by hedge fund executives and which has received funding from both Democrats and Republicans, including the Walton family (nearly a third of all funding) and Rupert Murdoch.
Massachusetts Parents United, whose funders include the Walton family and others who contributed dark money to the pro-charter school Question 2 ballot initiative in 2016. Its chief executive officer Keri Rodriguez was also state director of Families for Excellent Schools, which was banned from Massachusetts after paying a record civil forfeiture for hiding the true sources of its campaign donations.
Readers deserve to know that there are much larger forces at work in Massachusetts education politics, and they are being masked behind upbeat sounding names.
Remember when the pro-privatization side for Question 2 of 2016 spent $20 million in dark money? But it didn’t come from “Families” for excellent schools, it came from a handful of Massachusetts billionaires. You may not remember that because it wasn’t reported during the campaign in the state’s media, only here at MassPoliticsProfs.
Think about it. News stories like to present conflict. Other than the venerable MBAE, all the conflict on one side of this issue –all of it–is coming from the Waltons of Arkansas.
Here we go again–the politics of pretending.
Money Never Sleeps. Follow the money.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money (and other things). I don’t write about education policy.]
Photo: wikimedia.commons