The UFT elections are fast approaching and the three caucuses, "Unity" MORE' and "New Action" will be busy going to the schools and handing out leaflets on why they are best suited to lead the union in the future. However, absent from the election process is the education reform puppet organization, Educators 4 Excellence (E4E). The question is why aren't they running a slate of people in the UFT elections if they claim they represent teachers? The answer to that question is very simple, it is because they are afraid that their organization will be exposed for what it is, a front for outside education reform groups and not teachers. I would bet that E4E would receive well less than a thousand votes, probably a hundred or so, or significantly less than 1% of the eligible voters and they know it.
For E4E it's better to mislead the ever complaint news media with the fiction that they represent teachers and not their education reform masters. Therefore, it's not in E4E's best interest to participate in a democratic union election where they will be exposed as a
"special interest group" on the fringe of union politics and represent only a very thin minority of
"newbie teachers", most being the two year Teach For America wonders, who will be long gone from the classroom in five years.
Whichever caucus wins the UFT election, one of their first order of business should be to expose E4E as a
"fifth column", a phony organization that does not represent teachers but outside education reform groups who want to destroy public education. Too long the UFT has ignored this
cancerous tumor in the UFT body and it is time to surgically remove it by refusing to appear with E4E in any forum. These forums simply gives E4E credibility that they do not deserve. E4E had their chance to show their popularity with teachers by running in the election and failed the test. Let them fade into history as simply a tool for outside education reform groups.
