If there was ever any doubt of the importance of the defeat of the charter school ballot question in 2016, Scot Lehigh’s frozen-in-time A Time for Real Education Change column in the Boston Globe today reminds us of its importance: a 62-38% shellacking of the billionaire backers of Question 2 by teachers unions. But the…
Category: Massachusetts Parents United
Your Massachusetts Parents United Reader
This happened April 29. Boston Globe Education published a piece quoting Keri Rodrigues, president of the Walton backed AstroTurf front Massachusetts Parents United. A friend messaged me asking of the Globe “How are they so bad at this?” And my response was the Globe isn’t bad at this: it’s intentional. But just in case the…
Forget Stop the Wait RI, It’s I Told You So RI!
Back on March 9 I posted Rhode Island: Dark Money Backs “Parents Group” for More Charter Schools about a new operation called Stop the Wait RI. Maybe I should incorporate as I Told You So RI. That’s because the new Stop the Wait Group RI has taken a familiar path for dark money operations. Recall…
Massachusetts Parents United, National Parents Union, and the Christian Right
Two of the important props of the far right in America are Christian conservatives and economic royalists like the Waltons and Charles Koch. Those ties are becoming evident in school privatization including in financial support the Massachusetts Parents United has offered to a Christian right group and in National Parents Union’s funding from a Koch-Walton…
Let’s Try to Help Massachusetts Parents United with “Transparency”
Last week I was mentioned in a news story as leading the charge to scrutinize the funding behind politically active “foundation-backed groups, particularly Massachusetts Parents United.” I need to live up to my press clippings because there is more to the story of Massachusetts Parents United. The mention came in Shira Schoenberg’s excellent Getting a…
Charles Koch Buys into National Parents Union
There’s millions of dollars sloshing around Massachusetts Parents United and National Parents Union these days. Some of it is from Charles Koch. That’s the takeaway from a recent story in the Walton-funded online publication The74: The Koch connection was apparent when Charles Koch put a proxy on the board of National Parents Union….
Gov. Baker’s School Reopening Panel–Waltons Win Again?
With the national coronavirus situation grim Massachusetts is doing better and is preparing to reopen—including schools. Governor Charlie Baker’s reopening panels (No Place for Heroes) have been long on C-suite types (Zoom!) and short on front line workers. In the case of the school reopening panels, a solid five of the five “parent” members are…
A Response to Keri Rodrigues’s Accusation of Inaccurate Information
Since I got into following the dark money business with the 2016 school privatization ballot question in Massachusetts, I try to stay up on newly arising organizations that serve as fronts for the plans of billionaires. One such group is the National Parents Union, which is not national, not parents, and not a union. I…
The Growing Koch Presence in Massachusetts
There is an essential piece in today’s Washington Post about the ReOpen America campaign, Inside the conservative networks backing anti-quarantine protests and no quote is more important for Massachusetts than this one from Professor Robert Brulle, who exposed the Koch Brothers funding of the climate denial industry: “The involvement of the Koch institutional apparatus in…
Politics of Coronavirus: The Globe’s “Typical” Parent Happens to Head Privatization Front Massachusetts Parents United
Today in Frustrated with Home Schooling, Parents Declare: Class Dismissed the Boston Globe transmits the story of a typical parent struggling with educating kids at home. But the parent is actually a highly paid privatization advocate on the Walton family’s political payroll. How does this happen? Obviously it’s a real story. Parents are stressed, especially…