Last week was the annual conference of the Network for Public Education and part of my contribution was an 18 page report, A Citizens Guide to School Privatization. I’ll be adding to it over time as phony billionaire “moms” and “parents” groups proliferate. For now it includes national groups like Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, No Left Turn in Education, and others. You’ll find Christian nationalist funders like the Farris brothers of Texas and libertarian egomaniac Jeff Yass of Pennsylvania, and the invisible-to-Massachusetts-media Walton family. Plus the Koch network and the Council for National Policy. For local flavor we have National Parents Union, Educators for Excellence, and Democrats for Education Reform–a genuine parade of horribles. Read on:
Money never sleeps. Follow the money.
“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 a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is in print.]