Boston Globe and Corporate Elites Prop Up Their MCAS

In a weekend editorial the Boston Globe establishes the important principle that the funders of interest groups should be identified to the public. Then the paper went about establishing that this principle should not apply to interest group allies of the Boston Globe. I’ll fill in what the Globe left out.

Here is the principle: “Because one of the principal anti-MCAS arguments of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and its close (and financially dependent) ally Citizens for Public Schools. . . .” I agree that the public deserves to know when an interest group is “financially dependent” and to be informed who is behind the interest.

The Globe touts Voices for Academic Equity but ignores the principle to identify Voice’s patrons. Here are the members the Globe lists:

This group includes the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, four teachers groups — Teach Plus, Teach for America Massachusetts, The Teachers’ Lounge (a professional network of educators of color), and Educators for Excellence — Mass Insight Education, Democrats for Education Reform, Boston Schools Fund, the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, the National Parents Union, and the Education Trust Massachusetts.

Let’s use the Globe’s groupings and the Globe’s principle to see who these fronts are “financially dependent” upon:

Business

Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education: Walton Family Foundation, Barr Foundation.

Teachers: “four teacher groups”

Teach Plus-Boston Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Teach for America Massachusetts—Waltons, Barr, Boston Foundation . . .

The Teachers’ Lounge-Barr,. Boston Foundation. Launched in Roslindale 2021, raised almost $600,000 in 2022. Funny how that happens.

Educators for Excellence-Waltons, Barr, Boston Foundation, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, Barr, Strategic Grant Partners/Jacobsons

Miscellaneous

Mass Insight Education—Boston Foundation, Gates

Democrats for Education Reform—famous Democrat Rupert Murdoch, Barr, CJP, Fidelity, Boston Foundation

Boston Schools Fund—Barr, Gates, Boston Foundation, Fidelity, Waltons

Massachusetts Charter Public School Association—Waltons, Barr, etc.

National Parents Union—Waltons and Charles Koch. Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, John Arnold, Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, etc.

Education Trust Massachusetts—Waltons, Boston Foundation, Barr

The list is incomplete. Let’s fix that:

Boston Globe—John and Linda Henry, Barr ($1,000,000 for Globe’s education coverage from 2019-2021 and apparently ongoing). The Globe is important in passing off the rest of them as representing something other than a handful of billionaires, most of whom don’t live here. You can’t very well present the faces of equity as Jim Walton, Alice Walton, Amos Hostetter, Bill Gates, Charles Koch, etc.

The Globe advises “lawmakers should take notice of a new coalition.” Legislators would do better to take notice that these fronts are nothing more than a well-funded paper tiger. Remember Stand for Children Massachusetts? It was a power in ballot initiatives in 2010 and 2012, funded by the same billionaires. Gone, abandoned by its billionaire benefactors. Remember Families for Excellent Schools? Crushed 62%-38% in the 2016 charter schools ballot initiative, forced by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance to disclose its dark money billionaire donors, collapsed in corruption.

Money Never Sleeps. Follow the Money.

“One thing big money typically lacks is credibility, which is why those who deploy it work so hard to cover their tracks.”—Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson

[Full disclosure: I have a dark confession to make. It’s me. I’m the one funding the MTA. That’s because 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.]