After the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy as the metropolitan area struggles to get back on their collective feet. Educators4Excellence (E4E) issued one of their self-serving statements that it was happy that the E4E team came out unscathed. I guess the sixty people who died in the NYC Metropolitan area, including a teacher at the Brooklyn High School of Social Justice, don't count since none of them are E4E members. Talking about E4E membership? How many teachers are actually E4E members? Fifty? One Hundred?, Five Hundred? Better yet, how many are really active classroom teachers? I bet it is less than one hundred and of those, most are probably Teach For America "newbies" who can't wait to get out of the classroom and won't be teaching three years from now. Regardless of how many active members there are in E4E, one thing is clear, this group, or as I call them, a cult is anti-union and gets their funding from corporate and hedge fund education reformer groups. Time and again E4E is invited to various panel discussions by Education reform groups and has little good to say about our union rights and proposes policies that eliminate many of our "due process protections". In fact, they are the darlings of many education reform organizations and their policy papers reflect the agenda of education reformers.For example, they supported the repeal of LIFO and were a prime supporter of Mayor Bloomberg's infamous LIFO bill. They also agreed with the education reformers that a merit pay plan should be implemented, including higher initial salaries for "newbies" but no step increases for experienced teachers. Moreover, they believe the nonsense that a "great teacher" is more important than poverty in student academic achievement.As for the ATRs? The ATRs should be given six months to find a job or be terminated.
For some reason our union, the UFT, has tried to reach out to E4E and include them as part of the union body. In fact one of E4E's failed teachers who couldn't even gain tenure before abandoning the classroom, Rubin Brosbe, has his blog included in the union's Unity caucus Edwize blog for NYC teachers. In my opinion E4E is not like the loyal opposition caucuses like ICE, TJC, or more recently MORE. E4E is a union-destroying cult who is a cancerous tumor in the UFT body and needs to be removed from our union. E4E is a "tool" for the corporate elite who control the eduction reform agenda and is a danger to all teachers and it is the union's responsibility to kick them out before E4E's fifth columnist activities destroys the union from the inside just as cancer does to the human body.
South Bronx School and Accountable Talk have many more articles about E4E and they are a must read.