A while back I submitted the following oped to the Boston Globe. It was not selected for publication. I’ll leave it here as submitted and have more to say about it soon.
The Globe covers numerous aspects of education but never explores the enabling force behind interest groups like Massachusetts Parents United or Parents Defending Education: their funding, millions of dollars from the foundations of some of America’s most conservative billionaires.
Most of us think of foundations as civic minded and not political. But some philanthropies spend to influence public policy and thus, as political scientists Kristin A. Goss and Jeffrey M. Berry argue, act as interest groups. Rob Reich, author of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better, says that this “plutocratic bias” bolsters “more organizations favored by the rich and fewer favored by the poor.”
Take the Walton Family Foundation, based in Arkansas and funded by the heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune. Since 2017 WFF has spent nearly $9,000,000 to support the operations of such advocacy groups as Massachusetts Parents United, Latinos for Education, Latina Circle, Pioneer Institute, Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, and the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association.
The figure is an underestimate because WFF also bankrolls the national non-profits Education Reform Now and Educators for Excellence, both of which operate in Massachusetts. Education Reform Now is tightly related to Democrats for Education Reform. The Waltons provide about 30% of the funding for ERN each year.
I chose to track giving from 2017 onward because 2016 ended with the defeat of a ballot question to increase the number of charter schools in the state. Cousins Jim Walton and Alice Walton spent $2,585,000 backing the question including funding a DFER related ballot committee. WFF philanthropic spending in Massachusetts then ramped up beginning in 2017.
DFER has no membership. It’s former president explained “We’re essentially (campaign finance) bundlers.” The Globe recently printed an op-ed by DFER MA’s state director, who is frequently sought out for comments on news stories. When I searched the Globe archives for the terms “Democrats for Education Reform” and “Walton Family Foundation” I got zero results.
Massachusetts Parents United was formed by WFF in 2017. In 2018, the first full year of operation for which there are public records, MPU took in $957,000, of which the Waltons contributed $500,000.
MPU’s president, Keri Rodrigues, was state director of Families for Excellent Schools when it was running the 2016 ballot campaign and formerly an executive vice president at DFER MA. She is regularly sought out for comment in Globe stories on education. I searched Globe archives for the term “Massachusetts Parents United” from 2017 through March 2023 and found 37 entries. Then I searched for “Massachusetts Parents United” and “Walton Family Foundation” and came up empty.
It’s not just the Waltons. Parents Defending Education has roiled education circles in Wellesley, Newton, Milton, and elsewhere with complaints of bias against whites in equity programs. After stories generated by PDE, Wellesley’s superintendent was targeted for “obscene” and “awful” emails. Two Black principals in Newton were subjected to “racist and confrontational” attacks after the right-wing Breitbart news site picked up a PDE press release. PDE’s attacks have fostered a “culture of fear” in Newton, with teachers concerned they could wind up on Fox News. That’s what PDE wants.
Parents Defending Education isn’t parents. President Nicole Neily is a veteran Koch Brothers political operative. Her group raised $3,100,000 in its first year from right-wing foundations and works with Leonard Leo, the banker of conservative dark money.
Informing readers of the funding behind these interests is the most important avenue of truth the media can pursue. The Walton family promotes The Big Myth of market magic and as historian Nelson Lichtenstein writes is “the single largest source of funding for the ‘school choice’ movement and a powerful advocate of charter schools and voucher initiatives.” Koch and other far-right backers of PDE are out to destroy public education and replace it with a privatized version grounded in fundamentalist Christian teachings.
PDE, MPU and the like act as agents of their principals, the funders. The Globe should inform readers of the true powers behind these interest groups.
Maurice T. Cunningham, PhD., J.D., is author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization and a retired professor of political science at University of Massachusetts at Boston.
We both know why the Globe didn’t publish, don’t we?
Keep it up, Mo.
I have my theories. Thanks Ralph.