National Parents Union: Not a Union, Not National, Not About Parents

One unsurprising characteristic of the Walton family sponsored National Parents Union is that it has so few parent members.

Here is how NPU describes itself on its website:

I wanted to look at two aspects of NPU’s claims, that it is a parent organization and that it has members in all 50 states. It seems reasonable to assess parent organizations or grassroots activists as “members.” Unfortunately NPU does not list members on its website. But from the time around its inaugural convention in January 2020 through the end of February NPU sent out a series of tweets extolling various organizations or representatives of organizations who attended or supported the convention. I also consulted posts on Facebook and Instagram, but those sources proved inferior. In all I identified seventy organizations or activists that I classified as NPU’s members. So, are the NPU members parent organizations?

Mostly, the answer is no. Searches on Twitter, organization websites, and IRS Form 990 tax returns suggested various dominant functions I could use to characterize sixty-four of the seventy organizations. I found that there are fifteen charter school organizations (like KIPP and Rocketship) and nine charter school trade organizations (Like the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools). That makes 24 of the 64 “parent organizations.” There were another fifteen organizations I categorized as education options/choice, groups which present as helping navigate among different schools but which are designed to funnel students to charter schools. That makes 39 organizations tied in to the charter schools industry.

There are nineteen organizations I identified as “civic” and some I could further identify, for instance civic/Latinx, civic/civil rights, civic/autism, etc. Within the civic groups that could be identified, there were four I identified as civic/parents. The parent groups are Connecticut Parents Union, Minnesota Parents Union, New Jersey Youth Justice Initiative at newjerseyparentscaucus.org, and Massachusetts Parents United.

Of the four parent groups Massachusetts Parents United is emblematic since its CEO Keri Rodrigues Lorenzo is also the CEO of National Parents Union. But MPU is not a grassroots parents organization either. It is a privatization front underwritten by the Walton Family Foundation ($866,000 in 2017-2018).

So let’s turn to NPU’s claim to having members from all fifty states.

I was able to identify states where 53 of the 70 organizations primarily operate. Several are charter chains that operate nationally or in multiple states or other organizations that support privatization, like Democrats for Education Reform. A few could not be identified as to locale. Of those I could place in states, there are 22 states represented plus the District of Columbia. Puerto Rico is not included. I could increase this number by seven states—but only by counting additional states where the charter school corporations operate and one where DFER has a branch, thus emphasizing the corporate nature of National Parents Union.

Caution: I focused on organizations, not individual activists, though I did take note of them. Activists to be effective need to cultivate organization. Perhaps NPU isn’t identifying all its member organizations, but there is little reason for such an operation to hide its light under a bushel.

National Parents Union isn’t a union. It isn’t national. And it isn’t about parents. Then what is it?

To answer that question follow the money. (More on this soon). And the money leads to the Waltons, Gates Foundation, City Fund (billionaires John Arnold and Reed Hastings), and most likely, from Charles Koch.

National Parents Union is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape, have full swing. . . . Publicity is the very soul of justice.”—Jeremy Bentham

[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, not education.]