New “Ed Reform” Coalition Shows How Media Allows Billionaires to Control Narrative

According to a State House News Service report picked up at WWLP a coalition called “Voices for Academic Equity” has formed to oppose teachers’ unions efforts to amend the MCAS law. The story doesn’t say whom the coalition members represent. Simple: it’s the familiar story of capital vs. labor. But you wouldn’t know it because SHNS lets the billionaires control the narrative.

Here’s what SHNS has to say about the coalition members:

Convened by Education Reform Now (ERN) Massachusetts, part of Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts, the coalition includes the Boston Schools Fund, EdTrust Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, Mass Insight, the National Parents Union, Teach for America Massachusetts, TeachPlus and The Teachers Lounge.

I won’t go into all of them but Democrats for Education Reform/Education Reform Now (different legal structures, same entity) is a political money bundler. Don’t take my word for it, take DFER’s president’s word. In a 2012 interview then president Joe Williams explained “We’re essentially bundlers.”

Whose money does DFER bundle? The largest stakeholder appears to be the Walton family of Arkansas, which yearly donates about thirty percent of ERN’s income. ERN’s major local supporter is the Barr Foundation of Amos Hostetter, the fifth largest dark money donor ($2,000,000) to the losing charter schools privatization ballot campaign in 2016.

Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education has been around since 1989. Wealthy interests that want to influence policy often fund advocacy groups that have compatible aims. That happened here. Before 2017 the Waltons gave MBAE nothing. Since 2017, the Walton Family Foundation has donated $1,250,000. Barr has been a steady donor from 2010-2021 giving $1,290,000.

What if a harmonious operation doesn’t already exist? Billionaires can create their own as the Waltons did in 2020 with the National Parents Union (the sibling of Massachusetts Parents United, also a Walton outfit). The Waltons birthed NPU with big money rolling in from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, John Arnold, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Eli Broad, Steve Ballmer, and Reed Hastings, all billionaires devoted to privatizing the nation’s public schools. Oh yes, and Charles Koch, through a joint venture with the Waltons called the Vela Education Fund–$700,000 to NPU.

You can see more on Walton giving to coalition members here and more on Barr/Hostetter giving to them here.

The public sees union and they know it’s an interest group. When they see something like “Democrats for Education Reform” or “National Parents Union” they have no idea that DFER has no members (and has accepted millions from Republicans, including Rupert Murdoch) or that NPU is an agent for billionaires, not parents. Billionaire interests hide behind upbeat sounding names because they understand that big money lacks political credibility with the public. The capital side is playing the public for suckers. It’s the media’s job to make sure the suckers are given an even break. By not doing its job media has taken sides on behalf of the billionaires.

My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is now available.

[Full disclosure: as a former educator in the UMass system, I was a union member. I write about dark money, oligarchy, and democracy, not education.]