E4E: Did you hear that?

This is the first post in a short series dedicated to providing a teacher’s perspective on the organization known as Educators For Excellence. The posts in order will focus on their message, show who supports the organization, and hopefully record a audio discussion with a person from E4E.

I’m going to do the politically correct qualifier and be nice before I share my thoughts. E4E members who take the pledge stating they support the organizations core values are not stupid or bad teachers, they have a different perspective. There are issues from time to time, I agree with them like revamping behavior policies that negatively impact students of color. I think of them like so many colleagues; they are attempting to change the world for the better. However, I disagree with them on numerous issues that motivated me to share what I have learned. I’m not convinced participating in their agenda is good for our profession or students. E4E has billionaire donors to support their efforts. I have a blog. Try not to be offended because I’m sharing my opinion. E4E’s voice is loud and well funded. I’m just doing something small to disagree. After all, we do live in a democracy predicated on debating ideas. 

If you are a new educator to Minneapolis Public Schools working at Jefferson, Lucy Laney, Bethune, City View, or any school with a lot of new teachers, you likely have already received a second email from E4E looking to get coffee with you. I know because new teachers have been emailing me. Keep it up please! Share this post with your new colleagues.

The blog post officially begins now…

When you read that an organization “…works to ensure that the voices of classroom teachers are included in the decisions that affect our profession and our students,” what do you think? As a teacher, how can you be against including the voices of teachers? This quotation comes from the mission statement of Educators For Excellence. There is much more to unpack from this carefully crafted, almost seductive, and coded mission statement geared towards new teachers.

E4E uses a widely known tactic to politicos experienced in messaging (marketing in politics). It is called dog whistle politics. Language sharp enough to get the attention of the target audience, but vague enough to defend when confronted about it. Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich in 2012 called President Obama a “food stamp president.” Gingrich received the attention of conservative white voters, but defended himself against charges he was conjuring using it infer Obama stood for “lazy people.” E4E routinely uses this strategy on their website. Marketing matters when you are competing for attention. I think that is why they spent $284,665 on media communications in 2013.

Who hears the whistle?

Their target audience is new teachers.  There are so few decisions new teachers get to make about their profession. So choosing the word decisions possesses a sense of empowerment. E4E doesn’t target all teachers; they can point to a few experienced teachers, but their message and tactics indicate new educators are their focus. They host lunches at schools, against the rules by the way, with concentrations of younger teachers. Why not at schools with more experienced staff? They don’t buy it. I have been teaching seven years, I don’t qualify as new, but I could have easily been swayed by their marketing if I didn’t start teaching two years before E4E was founded. Heck just the word Excellence in their name is dog whistle. 

New teachers are probationary, work extremely hard (because that is what you have to do in this profession), are social justice minded, and don’t get paid what they deserve. By the way, you don’t have to be a new teacher to be social justice minded. Teaching is social justice work. Many of my colleagues are strong advocates for social justice changes for our students and their families because we see the impact of inequality in our schools. Decision makers could be district bureaucrats, politicians and/or teachers unions whom they may feel the least connected. Literally it could be everyone, especially if you are so busy working you don’t eat lunch with colleagues and become isolated in your room. New teachers see my first post to help you with this issue. An organization that seeks you out as a young professional is appealing. That is the beauty of coded dog whistle language, sharp, but vague at the same time. You will be empowered with the ability to influence decision makers. 

The Pledge

If influence and empowerment is the cornerstone of their mission statement, what decisions will they agree with? Look no further than their pledge. Yes there is a statement you must support to become an E4E member. As you read the bolded words, ask yourself the question “What does this mean? Bolded words are the dog whistle language. To be fair, myself and colleagues have met people who attended their happy hours and lunches with E4E that didn’t really pay attention to the pledge. For example, they see at the top “A higher starting salary.” How bad can an organization like that be? Without knowing a few of things I am writing about, how would you know? Here is where it gets interesting to me.

In the pledge to become a member you must agree to support:
1) “An even handed performance-based pay structure to reward excellent teachers.”

2) “Evaluating teachers through a holist and equitable system that incorporates value-added student achievement data as one component of effectiveness.”

3) “Eliminating the practice of ‘Last In, First Out’ for teacher layoffs. (no dog whistle language)

4) “Giving students and parents more opportunity to choose great schools.”

I’m a very laid back guy. But here is my reaction on evaluating and paying teachers using value added modeling (VAM). I am so sick of people who are not career educators and sideline philosophers thinking the art of teaching can be boiled down to a friggin number! Okay… Back to being laid back. Even if test scores are high, standardized tests don’t promote critical thinking.  So we shouldn’t be using them as policy making metrics or teacher pay. I don’t think paying teachers more without the added benefit of students becoming critical thinkers is…well not smart. If it isn’t making students better prepared to to think meaningfully, then it isn’t meaningful. Items one and two above in the pledge are interlinked. Pay teachers based on unreliable data? In that system, who in their right mind will teach in tough schools without narrowing curriculum to test prep?  Standardized tests suck too much money and time that should be spent on supporting our struggling learners to become critical thinkers, not rank teachers because they dedicate their lives to the students who need us most. Here is an excerpt from The Huffington Post in February 2015 on VAM:

“An April 2014 statement on VAMs by the American Statistical Association noted that they "typically measure correlation, not causation," and that effects "attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model." The ASA added, "VAM scores themselves have large standard errors, even when calculated using several years of data. These large standard errors make rankings [of teachers] unstable, even under the best scenarios for modeling.” Read the whole article here.

In my humble opinion, student achievement reflects how well we take care of people living in our society. A teacher is one team member helping to prepare and take care of students. We do the best we can for the students we have in our classrooms, no question. It is true that the biggest impact on a student at school is the teacher. Just like the biggest influence over students at home are parents. The biggest influence over your bus ride is the bus driver, but do you blame him or her for traffic? No. The best education policies are ones that impact students lives at home and school like stable housing and reasonable class sizes. Support raising the minimum wage. More than fifty percent of American students are now on free or reduced lunch. Sixty five percent of MPS students are in this situation. I do think education is a part of the solution to overcome the vicious cycle of poverty, but it is naive to think education alone will do it for all students. Unfortunately, the largest indicator of student success is parental income. Stable jobs and livable wages are not the norm for a majority of our students. VAM has nothing to do with that. VAM is a tool to sort teachers, and not a solution to fix problems inside or outside the classroom.

Little known fact, teachers don’t want bad teachers in their profession either. It injures the vast majority of us doing a good job. Last in, first out is a common state law that is the default if districts don’t negotiate a process to handle layoffs, not the only policy. New teachers to MPS, you should also know that we have growing enrollment. We are starting to face shortages of teachers, the threat of mass pink slips is not in your future. If you’re a bad teacher, we have a process for getting rid of you negotiated by our union with the district. I bet you didn’t see that coming. Yet E4E agrees, as an organization, with the very conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) known for drafting model bills for legislators to pass in their states. You might know some of ALEC’s key accomplishments like Right to Work shown to lower wages and the anti-immigration policy popularly known as SB1070 that perpetuates racial profiling infamous in Arizona. The only difference, ALEC doesn’t say how to do it in their model legislation, but in a world run by E4E would have VAM used to help determine your effectiveness as exemplified in Washington D.C. under Michelle Rhee’s program (page 2 first and second full paragraphs). 

Read the pledge yourself. 

For number four on the E4E pledge list above, the wording “great schools” is so vague, it can only be dog whistle language. What they really mean are charter schools. The choice of schools is quite large already in Minneapolis. School choice is the language used to indicate competition. I have routinely welcomed students from charter schools after October 1, the funding cut off date and that allows charters to keep state money. Also, weeks before standardized testing, charter schools are known to counsel students out and then return to public schools to save precious standardized test scores. Furthermore, charters do not have a proven track record of outperforming public schools. Only 17% of charters do as well or better than public schools. The highest achieving charter schools are typically very white and affluent. The allure of school choice permeates the education landscape. It even trickles down to students. 

Here is an experience I had not long ago. After a campaign event I was driving another volunteer and his kids home. Two of his three kids in the car attended KIPP schools. I asked what it was like going there and the oldest said “It is great! Way better than a public school, they don’t do anything to help kids get into college.” I asked if adults were saying that at school. She said yes. That broke my heart. She had never attended a public school. I then explained to her every high school in Minneapolis has a College and Career Center to help students get job experience, and stay on track for graduation, and help them apply to colleges all starting in 9th grade. We also have AVID in middle and high schools who help future first generation college students. AVID students earn large scholarships to schools like Augsburg College. I then explained my job as a public school teacher is to prepare students for college, if that is their path. I teach to keep doors open, not close them. The veil was lifted. I went on a bit of tangent there, but great schools infers competition with public schools as the enemy. E4E doesn’t to my knowledge recruit much out of the charter schools in Minneapolis, but the dog whistle language isn’t for the charter school teachers. It is for their funders. 

Money Talks

I take issue with presenting E4E as a teacher led organization akin to grassroots or bottom up, when they are not. The three largest foundations who support competition using VAM, charter schools and standardized test scores are the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and The Broad Foundation. These organizations give massive amounts of money to organizations like E4E. The next post will go into detail into this. An organizer for E4E told a colleague of mine at the MPS New Teacher Orientation they receive 80% of their funding from local foundations and donations. I calculated E4E’s total history of income from donations, grants, and contributions listed on their IRS Form 990 and then divided the number by how much each of the three foundations above donated to them. By the way non-profits are not required to show who contributes by law, none are listed on E4E’s website or 990. So I researched to find out who is bragging about giving to E4E publicly. This makes it difficult to have an accurate percentage. After doing the basic math of division, I found at least 58% of E4E’s income, contributions, and grants come Gates, Walton, and Broad since they began in 2010. In my next post, you will see a table and links to my sources, all from E4E’s 990s and foundation sources. 

With so much funding from so few organizations, E4E claiming to be grassroots or bottom up is dog whistle worthy. Here is Valerie Strauss’s post on the Answer Sheet Blog on how to spot a fake grass roots education reform organization. 

Recruiting Efforts

I’ll make this section short, this blog post is getting long. E4E has four full time organizers recruiting new members. They are paid very well. MFT 59 has one organizer. E4E outmatches union organizing and marketing with paid staff and available funds by leaps and bounds. These organizers host and pay for drinks at happy hours, take new teachers names off public documents to get your email, get supporters to drop flyers in teachers mailboxes, host lunches at sites, get links on school websites, and pass out flyers on school grounds. The last four break rules in our district. They have received a litany of cease and desist letters to comply with the rules from MFT 59 and our state teachers union Education Minnesota. I witnessed them get kicked out off school grounds by MPS staff (not MFT 59), but they keep doing it anyway. Maybe their leadership just doesn’t tell the organizers they are breaking the rules? Maybe they don’t care?

E4E also advocates members to get involved with the union. More of them are becoming building stewards. I can see them running candidates for elected union leadership positions. Yikes! 

Whenever I have asked questions or shared my opinion about E4E online to leaders within the E4E organization, the go to strategy is an offer to get coffee. I think it has to do with a lack of control over a semi-public conversation. Maybe they don’t want to answer questions like how do you reconcile the fact so much money comes from outside funders and E4E claims to empower the voices of teachers from the ground up? I’m sure I will be asked to get coffee by someone from E4E because of this post. Please don’t. I have more important things to do for my students and my profession than have a conversation that won’t go anywhere. 

Almost done…

In closing, please be aware of the old saying that if something is too good to be true, it is. The language is only a message. It doesn’t state who is standing behind E4E while they are blowing the dog whistle. Don’t be fooled. Social justice work is done by supporting your students and getting involved with efforts that impact our students lives at home and the community. E4E doesn’t spend money on issues that impact income, housing, and racial equity. They spend money on trying to recruit you to support an agenda that belong to wealthy foundations, not our students’ quality of life or critical thinking. When you hear the whistle of E4E calling, ignore it. Inform your colleagues E4E’s appealing message masks a larger truth about its mission. 

Thank you for reading and as always, feel free to share my blog via social media or otherwise.