One interesting thing about privatization fronts like the Walton family’s National Parents Union is that of membership and governance. Who gets to be members, what are the powers of members, how is leadership chosen? In the world of privatization organizations these components are rarely, if ever, democratic.
National Parents Union is a union, right? It wants to play off that name to evoke images that unions have, of broad membership and an institution that will fight for them. (They tested the name National Parents Coalition, but they went with union. See below). Labor unions are democratic in nature. They have elections in which the members choose who will lead the organization. The union that I belong to, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, had a close election in 2014 in which it chose Barbara Madeloni as president. The previous leadership had compromised to avoid ballot questions in 2010 and 2012. But Madeloni decided to fight Question 2 of 2016 to expand charter schools, and the coalition she built shellacked the Families for Excellent Schools proponents by 62%-38%. When Madeloni was term limited out there was another contested election, won by leaders with a similar approach.
The state director of Families for Excellent Schools was Keri Rodrigues Lorenzo, who now heads National Parents Union. The Families for Excellent Schools experience is not included on her bio on the NPU website.
Nor is there any place on the NPU website where members can go to find out their rights. There is no constitution or by-laws. What are my rights as a member? How does one become a member? Are the meetings run using Robert’s Rule of Order? How often do the members meet, and what powers do they have? When will the election for president and other officers occur? What is the nomination process? What if a member wants to bring a motion to support a $15 minimum wage, or Medicare for All? How do they do that? Who decides the compensation package of the officers?
I don’t recall seeing a constitution or by-laws on any of the privatizer websites I’ve seen. Some of them like the now collapsed Families for Excellent Schools or Massachusetts Parents United claim to have thousands of members but they are governed by self-appointed board of directors. In the case of MPU, the board of directors and the officers are the same people. They determine their own compensation and the direction of the organization. MPU claims 7,000 members but what powers do they have?
(I’d like to acknowledge that this morning Ms. Rodrigues let me know that a vote on organization by-laws will be held Saturday. I thank her for that information. I hope by-laws are posted on the website for members to consult and that this becomes a widespread practice).
As to the degree of control exerted by the funders, in NPU’s case prominently the Walton Family Foundation, it would be extraordinary if WFF simply wrote out a check for hundreds of thousands of dollars without any control. This is not how modern venture capital philanthropies operate. The scholarship in this area is pretty clear. Funders practice “results oriented” giving based on a business model for investments in start-ups (Reckhow, Follow the Money, 31). Another reported NPU funder is the Broad Foundation, which “exercised control over the direction of their policy priorities, determining what organizations would be funded to fulfill specific expectations. They also held grantees accountable to outcomes that were expressed as concrete deliverables.” (Tompkins-Stange, Policy Patrons, 70).
If there’s one thing we’ve learned following corporate fronts like Families for Excellent Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, and Massachusetts Parents United, it’s that in the world of dark money nothing is ever what it seems. Same for National Parents Union.
“Why wait for popular opinion to catch up when you could portray as ‘reform’ what was really slow-motion demolition through privatization?” – Professor Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Plan for America.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]