Framing the MCAS Opposition: “Business Community” or “Parents”?

How the media frames the opposing sides on a ballot question is important. On the MCAS question one side is easy: it’s the teachers unions, especially the Massachusetts Teachers Association. According to the media the opposing side is either or both of the “business community” and “parents” (actually, one parent: Keri Rodrigues of the Walton family funded National Parents Union). The business community frame has some truth to it but is incomplete. The parents frame is entirely wrong.

The accurate part of the business community frame reflects donations from business stalwarts like the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Massachusetts High Technology Council, Massachusetts Business Roundtable, Liberty Mutual Insurance, and Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (funded by the Barr Foundation and the Walton Family foundation of Arkansas).

What is incomplete about the business frame is that, selecting out donations over $10,000,  those entities and a sprinkling of executives contributed only $319,344 of the $1,530,455 given to the Protect Our Kids ballot committee as of the October 7 reporting period.

Ray Stata has given $200,000. Six individual donations of $100,000 each are all from men in banking or financial services, some of whom have given to prior campaigns to privatize public schools or damage teachers unions. Education Reform Now, connected to Democrats for Education Reform, has contributed $146,644 in dark money. (Here are DFER’s donors including famous Democrat Rupert Murdoch). So seven individuals and one dark money operation have given $946,644. More comprehensive reporting would reflect the emphasis on financial firms and dark money.

The measure of the oligarchic interest is easy: dollars. Then what is the measure of parents commitment? Answer: the press availability of Keri Rodrigues, who is presented as speaking for parents. Accepting that frame is naïve.

Rodrigues has been climbing the ladder of the corporate education reform campaign for at least ten years, as indicated in her Linkedin profile. She was executive vice president for strategy and communications for Democrats for Education Reform from November 2014-October 2015. She has been the face of Massachusetts Parents United since December 2016 and of National Parents Union since 2019.

DFER, MPU, and NPU are all kept in business by the Walton Family Foundation and MPU and NPU were created by WFF. Boston’s Barr Foundation also donates large sums to Education Reform Now and to MPU. The Waltons were major donors to the 2016 charter school ballot proposal as was Barr’s funder Amos Hostetter, who gave $2,000,000 in dark money. We didn’t know that until the Office for Campaign and Political Finance ordered the Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy Committee to file and report its millions in dark money donations, long after the ballots were cast.

You might have noticed a gap in Rodrigues’s Linkedin profile from October 2015-November 2016. During that period, she was state director of the 501(c)(3) Families for Excellent Schools Inc. Let’s go back to that OCPF determination letter:

For a period of four years from the date of this agreement, FES (the (c)(3), for which Rodrigues was state director) will not engage in fundraising in Massachusetts, soliciting in Massachusetts, or engage in any ballot question or other election-related activity in Massachusetts.

The media institutions who push the “parents” frame could ask Rodrigues about her role as state director of FES. They haven‘t. Reporters might be curious about why the person they represent to the public as a typical parent pays herself and her husband (as of 2022) $661,775 per year. The reporters are not curious. They might query about other donors to NPU, including a joint venture between the Walton family and famous Democrat Charles Koch. That doesn’t happen either. They could ask for proof of the 250,000 members NPU claims in Massachusetts or the 1,700,000 nationally. Proof is non-existent.

If you’re running the Protect Our Kids Future: Vote No on 2 ballot committee, you have to be chortling every time the media takes the “parents” frame at face value.

Postscript: Since posting this piece the Protect Our Kids Future: No on 2 committee is running a tv ad with required disclosure. It appears at east two new donors have given at least $100,000 each since the October 5 reporting deadline: State Street Corp. and New Balance billionaire Jim Davis.

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Reports primarily accepting the business community frame: WBUR, CommonWealth Beacon, and Boston Globe (here, here, and here).

Reports primarily accepting the parents frame: WGBH, WCVB, CommonWealth Beacon, and masslive.

Reports accepting both business community and parent frames: Boston.com, masslive (here and here), Boston Globe, and boston.com.

“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: 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.]