My Letter to the Boston Globe re K-12 Political Coverage

On March 14, 2024, I wrote to several Boston Globe editors and reporters concerning the Globe’s coverage of K-12 interest groups in Massachusetts. I have received no response. The letter is below, I will list addressees and another note after the letter. I hope you will also read Banned in Boston: Coverage of Walton Family Spending on K-12 Interest Groups, 2022 Edition,  Latest on the Barr Foundation K-12 Interest Group Team, 2022 and Banned in Boston: Globe Coverage of Barr Foundation’s K-12 Interest Group Spending.

Dear Reporters and Editors,

I read Jon Chesto’s report MCAS ballot question pits Massachusetts Teachers Association against business community—again where he posits that a proposed 2024 ballot question to end MCAS might be a replay of the 2022 millionaire’s tax question; but allows it might be more like to the 2016 charter school ballot question.

“MCAS Ballot Question” identifies the teachers unions as the key drivers behind the No on 2 campaign in 2016 and the Fair Share tax in 2022, both of which they won. The unions, especially the Massachusetts Teachers Association (full disclosure: as a UMass retiree, I am a member of the MTA) are now backing the MCAS repeal. Chesto identifies the union’s prime opposition in all three campaigns as the “business community.”

Voters have a right to know the true funders behind ballot question committees and interest groups whether it be unions, corporations, or wealthy individuals. I recently wrote a blog post, Why is The Boston Globe’s Sports Coverage So Much Better Than Its K-12 Political Coverage? where I argue that the Globe sports page provides in-depth reporting on the powerful figures off the field, whereas the K-12 political coverage does so inadequately, if at all.

As for the backing of the Boston business community for Question 2 promoting additional charter schools in 2016 the Globe did report the community had an interest in an educated workforce. But as I wrote in Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization:

Only four of the BBJ’s (Boston Business Journal’s) top fifty employers saw charters as important enough to make a contribution. The major Massachusetts donors were in the hedge fund and financial services industries and are not major employers in the state.

After the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) ruled in 2017 that dark money donors who gave to the pro-charters committees (primarily through Great Schools Massachusetts (GSM)) must be disclosed, it appeared that $13,775,000 was given to GSM  by only five donors, as displayed in Table 2.2 from my peer-reviewed book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.

The top donor to GSM was dark money funneled through Families for Excellent Schools Inc. OCPF did not account for the true originators of that money. To replace FESI among the top five with individual donors and maintain my practice of combining family members, we would add Jim and Alice Walton of Arkansas who gave a combined $2,585,000. I think we would agree that the WalMart heirs are not usually considered to be part of the Massachusetts business community.

I paid less attention to the 2022 campaign, but Office of Campaign and Political Finance records are revealing. The Globe reported that the Coalition to Stop the Tax Hike committee raised over $14 million and OCPF records show that sum was raised from 451 separate donations. Of these, Jim Davis ($0 in 2016) gave $2 million. Paul Edgerley gave $1 million (he also gave $1 million in dark money to FESI in 2016) and Sandra Edgerley gave $1 million. Suffolk Construction gave just over $1 million. Rand-Whitney Container Board of New Jersey gave $1 million. Three different “Foxrock” entities gave a combined $1 million. Those were the only million-dollar givers, for a total of seven million.

Few of the 2016 charter givers were donors in 2022 or to put it another way, few of 2022’s anti-tax increase donors showed much interest in education in 2016. Perhaps MCAS will resonate in a way that increasing charter schools did not.

Since “MCAS ballot question” interviewed two representatives of interest groups opposing MCAS repeal, Ed Lambert of Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE) and Keri Rodrigues of National Parents Union (NPU), I turned my attention to the two largest funders of those two groups.

The Walton Family Foundation (WFF) gave MBAE $1,775,000 from 2017-2022 (the last year for which Form 990 tax returns are available). In 2016 and prior thereto it appears that the WFF did not contribute at all to MBAE. As I show in Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, MBAE members were not big campaign donors in 2016. The Walton Family Foundation has given NPU and Rodrigues’s other venture Massachusetts Parents United (MPU) a combined $4,466,000 from 2017-2022.

Amos Hostetter was one of the top five dark money donors in 2016. Hostetter’s philanthropic arm the Barr Foundation donated $940,000 to MBAE from 2017-2022. Barr donated $945,000 to MPU from 2017-2022.

Overall, the WFF has donated at least $9.9 million to K-12 interest groups in Massachusetts from 2017-2022; the Barr Foundation has donated over $14 million to K-12 interest groups in Massachusetts from 2017-2022.

Additionally, from 2019-2022 Barr donated $1.4 million to the Boston Globe for its K-12 The Great Divide education coverage. The Globe originally announced the funding relationship with Barr on June 20, 2019 as a two-year program with an initial grant of $600,000.

My search through the “Boston Globe (current) 1980-present” database at the UMass Boston library for the terms “Barr Foundation” and “Great Divide” found forty-five returns in all from 2019-present, but about half are duplicate entries. By my count, the Globe has made the disclosure of the Barr Foundation’s financial support for Great Divide coverage twenty-three times since 2019 with no entries disclosing that relationship for 2023 or 2024. Using the same database since the September 13, 2019 announcement of the Great Divide staff, I found (as of March 13, 2024) 501 entries by running the single term “Great Divide.” I will confess I did not read them all. My guess is about half are duplicates and even the most recent “Great Divide” entry is not concerned with schools at all but reviews a novel about the Panama Canal. Still, the Globe’s disclosure has been limited.

In past years, the Globe occasionally disclosed that Barr helps fund its K-12 coverage. One example, from an April 19, 2022 Globe report on a climate change poll conducted by MassInc and funded by the Barr Foundation: “The foundation provides grant support for a Globe education project, The Great Divide.” There was a similar disclosure in a May 26, 2021 report about another MassInc poll, After a difficult year, the majority of Mass. Parents want in-person school this fall by Bianca Vázquez Toness; Ms. Toness consistently included disclosure of the Barr-Globe relationship in her reporting and there was even a disclosure in a Nick Stoico story about Ms. Toness receiving an award for her education coverage, Globe education reporter earns top prize for coverage of inequity in Massachusetts schools. Meghan Irons also provided disclosure in her reporting.

But my concern is that the Globe does not consistently disclose, as evidenced by quoting Rodrigues and Lambert in “MCAS ballot question,” and then not disclosing that the Globe, MBAE, and NPU/MPU have all received millions of dollars in the past few years from the same source, Barr.

The Globe’s readers have a right to know of the relationships that spring from Barr’s contributions to the Globe, MBAE, NPU, and additional educational interests funded by Barr including Democrats for Education Reform (through Education Reform Now), Educators for Excellence, and others. This omission is even more acute when people are relying on the Globe in making decisions on voting for ballot questions.

I will publish this letter or something like it in a blog post sometime soon, but I wanted to pass these concerns on for your consideration first.

Addresses, via email: Nancy Barnes, editor; Victoria McGrane, politics editor; Melissa Taboada, education editor; Greg Huang, business editor; Joh Chesto, reporter; Christopher Huffaker, reporter; Mandy McLaren, reporter; Deanna Pan, editor; James Vaznis, reporter; Emma Platoff, reporter; Samantha Gross, reporter; Alyssa Vega, digital; Matt Stout, reporter, Jim Dao, editorial editor. 

I will not be posting for a bit but later in April I will be back with a three-parter of additional thoughts about coverage of the 2024 MCAS ballot question proposal. First, this is a contest between capital and labor. Second, The Globe Sports Page Really Does Provide Better Coverage of Sports than the Globe Great Divide page does of K-12 Education Interests. Finally, Yes, The Globe Can Provide Funding Disclosure of K-12 Interests. It’s a Choice. I promise, they’ll be shorter and more fun.

[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.]