Mendacious Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman Wants NJ Reporters to Join His Hit-Job on Wake Up Call NJ. Will They?

Mendacious Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman, founder of the NJEA-front New Jersey Public Education Coalition (NJPEC), is back, once again trying to intimidate and silence those with whom he disagrees. This time, Gottesman is reaching out to 46 reporters at all the major New Jersey news publications as well as some national ones in order to undermine a new effort called Wake Up Call NJ.  Sunlight knows that when Gottesman is involved, there’s likely dishonesty and intimidation at work because that’s Gottesman’s modus operandi.  Gottesman is a proven liar and a bully, and Sunlight would urge these 46 reporters to consider the source and do their own, independent assessment of Wake Up Call NJ.

First, a bit about Wake Up Call NJ.  Sunlight visited Wake Up Call NJ’s website, where we found that its mission is “to equip New Jersey public school parents with the facts about their children’s schools.” Their “Education Facts” include a great deal of data about actual student performance on state and national tests, which reveal that significant numbers of New Jersey students cannot do math at grade level and will ultimately need remedial help in college.  The website allows parents to search for their local school and see how well students there are performing. This information allows parents to go beyond the letter-grades students receive and understand exactly where their children stand academically.  Nothing more and nothing less.

But that’s too much for the NJEA-funded Gottesman and NJPEC. Sunlight was alerted to an email from Gottesman to 46 reporters at all the major news publications in New Jersey as well as some national ones.*  It’s typical Gottesman hit-job: the subject line suggestively asks if Wake Up Call is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and an “anti-Public Schools group.” As usual, Gottesman doesn’t refute any of the facts and data that Wake Up Call NJ presents — because they appear to be facts. Rather, with his trademark personal attack, Gottesman goes after one of the three educators who made videos supporting Wake Up Call NJ.  Gottesman seeks to discredit her personally and then discredit Wake Up Call NJ by association, and pushes the 46 reporters to do the same. Gottesman even provides the full name of the educator, no doubt in an effort to expose her to attacks from Gottesman’s fellow travelers and intimidate any other educators who might consider speaking out.

For the record, here’s what Sunlight found on the Wake Up Call NJ website‘s FAQ about who is to blame for the low level of academic achievement:

Wake Up Call blames the process, not the people. Firstly, the “blame game” doesn’t help any kids. Secondly, we love educators and we believe teaching is the most important profession in our state. No single institution or group is responsible for this problem. Our focus is on illuminating the difficult truth about challenges in our public schools to spur action and real improvement.

That doesn’t sound very “anti-Public Schools” to us.

As Sunlight has amply documented, Gottesman is a proven liar and a bully.  He earned his “Hundreds of Millions” moniker by falsely claiming to the Star-Ledger that right-wing groups were donating “hundreds of millions” of dollars to parent groups in New Jersey, which is absurd on its face. Yet Gottesman has never retracted the claim. He also falsely denied that NJPEC was funded by the NJEA, which it is via dark-money Super PAC Eduction Truth Project.  Gottesman is also a serial bully (here, here, and here).  Now Wake Up Call NJ is getting the Gottesman treatment.

Will the New Jersey press corps play along?  Normally, we would expect that New Jersey’s press corps would see through Gottesman’s lies and personal attacks, but unfortunately reporters such as NorthJersey.com’s Mary Ann Koruth and InsiderNJ‘s Fred Snowflack have taken the mendacious Gottesman at face value and written pieces that read like NJPEC press releases.  We hope New Jersey’s press corps will do their own, independent research on Wake Up Call NJ and see Gottesman for the proven liar and bully that he is.

*New Jersey Globe, New Jersey Monitor, NJSpotlight News, NorthJersey.com (Bergen Record), Associated Press, NJ.com (Star-Ledger),  InsiderNJ, News 12, Philadelphia Inquirer, National Public Radio, Gannett (Asbury Park Press, Courier News, among others), Wall Street Journal, Chalkbeat, NBC, Turner, Fortune, CNN, the American Enterprise Institute, Forbes, and Axios.