The Value of Voice

The guiding principal behind education reform is competition. Schools, teachers, and students become metrics to determine successes and failures. Standardized tests are at the center of measuring students and teachers alike. I believe students should not feel like winners or losers in the game of school. We educate and mentor students to bolster them, not identify losers. We educate to help build a just future for all students, not test scores that represent little educational value.

It is easy to assume people against changes based on competition think our education system is hunky dory. If teachers speak against particular edreforms, we are cast as uncaring teachers protecting our jobs in the drama of high stakes testing. That truly isn’t the case. We teach because we care. Even if you’re an E4E member, charter school teacher, or career public school teacher it isn’t fair to discount the passion we have for our students and teaching by stating or insinuating these individuals don’t believe the students we teach matter. That is not my intent. It is offensive and I hope no one is offended, but if you are not reading my blog as an expression of passion for teaching and learning. Educators are not millionaires, but our actions and voices count more and are not heard nearly enough. 

Educators 4 Excellence attempts to co-opt our voices for the agenda of edreforms that are not good for students.

Everyone should draw a line that states what you stand for and be proud of who stands behind you. Education groups must do the same. If you claim to be a bottom up organization, then your mission and funding comes from the members. Don’t hide the facts. How can Educators 4 Excellence claim to be grass roots and take large sums of money from foundations with explicitly stated goals to change our profession?

I don't fault E4E for seeking large sums of money from wealthy people. It is congruent with their mission and the wealthy funders’ goals. If you read my last blog post, you saw the E4E pledge. I don’t think this is a question about whether or not money influences E4E. That assumes their mission from the start was truly rooted in teachers voices. You won’t find who funds them on their website; you won’t see in their news feed when they receive giant donations. Why not? It seems brag worthy E4E received $3,000,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You might conclude that information contradicts their grassroots image. 

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	total
Gates		947,941		3,000,695		3,948,636
Walton			156,602		825,000 (pg 33)	990,602
Broad				100,000* (pg 124)		100,000
Arnold foundation			500,000			500,000
Peter and Lucia Buck Foundation				$150,000	$200,000	350,000
Mcknight Foundatin			50,000	200,000 (scroll down)		250,000
IRS 990 Forms Filed	339,031	1,926,028	1,297,548	5,135,182	Not Publicly Available Yet	6,139,238
			57.9% Gates, Walton, and Broad	At least 70.5% funds from foundations	8,697,789	Total Donations:6,139,238

*Broad does not share the exact dollar amount donated to its grantees. Therefore, a final number can not be determined other than a minimum of $100,000 because E4E is listed in the $100,000 to $100,000,000 grantee category. 

Sources

Only private non-profits are legally required to disclose who funds them. So I can only include foundations who donated on their websites. I learned about E4E’s financials by looking at their IRS 990 forms on guidstar.org. 

In the words of the foundations

The Walton Family Foundation of Wal-Mart fame, is dedicated to competition in its mission. They believe in their mission and are quite explicit about it.

“As part of the Walton Family Foundation K-12 Education Program, we invest in organizations and programs that empower parents to choose among high-performing schools and insert competition into public education.  The Public Charter Startup Grant program supports the creation of public charters by providing grants to school developers as they launch new schools.”

The question to me becomes why would Walton donate nearly a million dollars to E4E? The answer is the Walton foundation believes E4E furthers their mission. See E4E’s pledge to see how much competition is explicitly cited in using standardized tests.  

The Gates foundations gave E4E nearly $4,000,000. Why? Bill Gates believes that competition will further student outcomes. It doesn’t take long to enter “charter” into the foundations grant search to see multi-million dollars contributions. Standardized test scores are at the center of demonstrating a schools “success.” That is competition. 

There is another reason why Gates’s supports E4E. On his blog he writes “…teachers don’t have enough say in education. One of the things we’re trying to do at our foundation is to help teachers get that support they’re looking for.” Gates is referring to E4E. At the same time, teachers have their union. If you are not active in your union, you are not participating in the conversation and actions that bolster our students learning. Advocating for change within your union to improve education is the most effective way to make immediate impact. Teachers negotiate contracts, E4E does not. Want a better behavior policy that doesn’t unfairly suspend or expel students of color, advocate within your union.

Finally, Gates committed $335 million to promoting teacher effectiveness. The network of schools targeted were a part of the Measures of Effective Teaching three year study. Yup they used VAM (See my previous blog post about this failures of VAM). E4E wants teachers to be paid based on test scores and other factors not mentioned or explained. Within E4E and the report its difficult assess teacher performance because of drastic differences in schools.

The last of the big three is the Broad Foundation. The foundations in the table above also fit the competition profile as well. For the sake of brevity, going into detail about each of their competition based ideas would be redundant and boring. I am including Broad in the analysis because they are so influential in promoting competition in education. They gave at least $100,000 to E4E. However, it is important to note that in Broad foundation board reports testifies to competition and education reform. In their 2009/2010 board report stated:

“The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. Secretary of Education, marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned.

With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time, and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.”

In the Broad foundation report for 2013/104 (pg. 59) they are explicit by explaining what E4E stands for:

“E4E has three major functions: help educators learn about public-policy issues related to education reform; create a network of like-minded educators; and mobilize this network of educators to take action and assume leadership roles in their schools, districts and unions.”

Broad spends a lot of money on its superintendent academy to promote its edreform platforms. Further the same agenda by funding E4E to get teachers to buy the rhetoric and edreforms become easier to get.

The Money

Divide the total donations by Gates, Walton, and Broad by the total income listed on E4E’s Form 990s since founded in 2010 and you get 57.9%. If you include the other foundations I found that publicly shared their donations to E4E their total researchable income is 70.5%. This is not very grassroots. 

That starkly contradicts the 80% of E4E’s funds coming from local foundations and donations told to my colleague by an E4E organizer at this year’s Minneapolis Public Schools New Teacher Orientation. The only foundation with any geographic proximity that donated to them was the McKnight Foundation (3M). Yes they are located in the Twin Cities, but they give world wide. $250,000 was donated to E4E explicitly to support operating expenses. McKnight and E4E are not local for all intents and purposes when its comes to education. E4E origins are in New York City founded by Teach for America corps members. 

What’s the big deal?

Many of the foundations in this piece give to many worthy causes that I agree with. Foundations themselves are not evil entities. Bill Gates, please keep giving money to reduce the infant mortality rate. On the other hand, please stop giving money to organizations that splinter our education system into chunks that do not honor the dire needs of our students and families that impact learning such as stable housing and fair living wages. 

The problem to me is simple. To claim that educators don’t have a voice in policy decisions, but you already have a framework for policies E4E at best is a contradiction and at its worst a blatant lie. Furthermore, giving the impression this is a grassroots organization while receiving huge sums of money from foundations who are promoting their likeminded agenda only deepens that dishonesty.

There is no better bang for your buck if you want to infuse competition into education than support E4E. The ability to claim teachers stand for the policies of ending seniority, pay for performance based on standardized tests than have teachers say it for them. I was at a press conference for an education policy proposal and a local edreform proponent lawyer Mike Cerisi told a colleague that teachers don’t want seniority and cited a recent E4E press release stating its 300 plus members in Minneapolis believe this. At the same time, I meet people who signed the pledge but don’t agree with ending seniority. Mr. Cerisi coopted those teachers voices. 

In Conclusion

The problem with competition in education is simple. Students aren’t products. Teachers are motivated by their students’ needs, not standardized tests. Educators 4 Excellence represents the voices of particular wealthy funders. Educators beware E4E is an organization that coopts your voice rather than listening to it. Join me and other advocates for strong public schools (they are not wealthy foundations) to make schools a place of learning instead of testing. The value of your voice is worth more than E4E and it's wealthy foundations.