Perhaps you have heard of Educators 4 Excellence, or their shorter name E4E.
The group started in New York City, led by young teachers who did not like the union. They seem to be Teach for America teachers, mostly with a year or two of experience. They have received millions from the Gates Foundation and other corporate reformers.
Now they are spreading to other states, to substitute wherever possible for the traditional teacher organizations as the “voice” of young teachers, those who want merit pay, like high-stakes testing, want to be evaluated by test scores, etc.
Jonathan Pelto tells their story here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The “excellent” part is how they land high-paying #NPIC jobs bashing teachers after their two years of #TFA tourism.
LikeLike
What next?
>
LikeLike
Teachers and Tiaras? Administrators for Advancement? Higher Educators for Hedge Funders?
LikeLike
“Indonesia for the Indonesians”?
LikeLike
Educators 4 Excellence is only one of a much larger group of organizations in a portfolio of investments offered by New Profit. The following information comes from New Profit’s website http://www.newprofit.org
“New Profit uses money acquired from investors to provide multi-year financial and managerial support to non-profits to make their operations attractive to investors who want to “do well” (make money) while “doing good” (supporting worthy causes).
New Profit’s portfolio of social services is professionally managed through a “partnership” with Deloitte Consulting, one of the largest professional service companies in the U.S, and with pro-bono legal services from one of the nation’s leading law firms, Goodwin Procter. The firm also helps New Profit portfolio organizations navigate opportunities presented by federal legislation.
In other words there is nothing amateur about this or other organizations that are set up as non-profits but also able to make profits for investors.
A team of portfolio managers at New Profit reviews more than 300 organizations each year in order to identify a few social innovations with potential for a “transformative and widespread” impact.
When accepted into the portfolio, that organization receives a multi-year unrestricted grant (typically $1 million over four years) along with support to “grow the organization and maximize its impact.” Every organization is also paired with a manager from New Profit who becomes a member of the board of the organization and works directly with the organization’s CEO on strategic issues.
Organizations must meet a number of eligibility criteria including: independent 501(c)(3) status, a current annual expense budget of more than $500,000, leadership from a full-time CEO, and a diversified revenue mix—organizations cannot have 50% or more of revenues from one philanthropic donor. (Many are supported by far more than one foundation). In addition to education, New Profit works on workforce development, public health, and poverty alleviation
The pitch to investors is that New Profit measure impact and performance—for both individual organizations and the investment portfolio. There are two measures: “growth in lives touched and revenue.” “In 2010, performance of the current portfolio exceeded growth targets, realizing a 41% percent Compound Annual Growth Rate for revenue and a 40 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for lives touched.”
2015 Education Portfolio with brief mission statements, usually filled with abundant in self-aggrandizing rhetoric.
ANET (ACHIEVEMENT NETWORK)—helps schools boost student learning with great teaching that’s grounded in standards, informed by data, and built on the successful practices of educators around the country.
AVANCE—strengthens families in at-risk communities through effective parent education and support programs…, a relentless focus on positive child and family outcomes to close the achievement gap and build a better future for children, families, and communities served by the Head Start program.
COLLEGE ADVISING CORPS— increases the number of low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students entering and completing higher education.
COLLEGE POSSIBLE—provides coaching to low-income students to-and-through college with 98% earning admission and 80% supported through graduation.
COLLEGE SUMMIT—increases the college enrollment rate of low-income students. Partner districts nominate rising seniors to attend an intense four-day college application workshop held at a nearby college during the summer before their senior year.
EDUCATORS FOR EXCELLENCE (E4E)—teachers who work toward a higher starting salary, opportunity for continued intellectual development, a high level of professional development and support, an even handed performance-based pay structure, and parental choice.
EYE TO EYE—improves the life of every person with a learning disability by supporting and growing a network of youth mentoring programs run by and for those with learning differences, and by organizing advocates to support the full inclusion of people with learning disabilities and ADHD in all aspects of society.
I MENTOR—improves the lives of high school students from underserved communities through innovative, technology-enabled mentoring.
KIPP—helps students from educationally underserved communities develop the knowledge, skills, and character needed to succeed in college and the competitive world beyond.
NEW CLASSROOM INNOVATION PARTNERS —complements the role of live, teacher-led instruction with other instructional modalities such as independent learning, collaborative learning, and virtual tutoring.
NEW LEADERS—ensures high academic achievement for every student by attracting and preparing outstanding leaders and supporting the performance of the urban public schools they lead.
NEW TEACHER CENTER—improves student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of teachers and school leaders.
TURNAROUND FOR CHILDREN—partners with the most-challenged, lowest-performing public schools to transform them into centers of teaching, learning, and achievement by deploying an education coach, instructional coach, and social work consultant to a partner school with a committed principal and a school-based social worker.
New Profit is just one of many “portfolio aggregators” of existing social service organizations likely to appeal to investors because they have an initial track record of performance, are open to expansion (think franchise), and will accept the “discipline” of market-based management required by New Profit.
LikeLike
You could probably pitch Monsanto- they help feed the poor; or,
BP for all the environmental work in the gulf.
LikeLike
Thanks Laura.
LikeLike
Here’s our Minnesota’s E4E lobbyist at work in Minnesota:
[video src="http://www.senate.mn/media/media_video_popup.php?flv=cmte_fineduc_021215.flv" /]
LikeLike
Reminds me so much of the dictum:
Be careful what you pray for, you may get it.
LikeLike
The name itself is a sound bite that people who don’t go deep into the issue, and there are millions of them, will resonate to. These are master manipulators. Young teachers they may be but they see an in to power and they are taking it without knowing the horrors they are perpetrating on children. So very sad and hard to watch.
LikeLike
Yes, these groups are great naming themselves.
Here’s part of their mission:
“As a group of New York teachers who wanted to change the top-down approach to policy-making, which largely alienated teachers like us from crucial decisions that shaped our classrooms and careers.”
Could they be any more oxymoronic? Their version of “excellence” involves supporting the very top-down policies that are alienating the truly voiceless educators and ruining our classrooms.
DAMPoet, can I get a poem?
LikeLike
good catch!
LikeLike
They’re still around, eh? “Youth is wasted on the young.” – George Bernard
LikeLike
In WA State, we have Teachers United. Same thing – mostly ex-TFA, anti-union, pro-merit pay. pro-standardized testing, test scores tied to teacher evals. Lots of Gates money. They are the ones who get called by our Ed Deform mayor and legislators to testify about how wonderful merit pay is, or how only teachers who aren’t doing their job are worried about standardized test scores being a part of their eval.
LikeLike
A teacher, promoting E4E, posted a letter, at one of the plutocratic-funded education sites, claiming that the organization allows no donor, to contribute more than 10%, towards its budget. Gates gave $3 mil. so, I assume E4E has $30 mil.
270 Strategies advertises E4E as their “Partner in Action” and, as a teacher-led organization. If the latter is true, why is a high powered message broker needed? 270 Strategies’ high profile clients include Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Rahm Emanuel’s and charter-loving Cory Booker’s.
The teacher gave the following reason for joining E4E, “(Teachers) don’t have the ability to voice their ideas to those in power…Don’t we want successful entrepreneurs to be exposed to the effective role teachers can play when given the chance to lead policy development. One would hope that had entrepreneur David Welch been invited to discuss ways to alleviate the achievement gap with active classroom teachers, the Vergera case would never have been filed.”
I don’t want the values of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs anywhere near my children nor, any children. If they want to cocoon themselves in enclaves, dictate education policy, fund it and, force their children to participate, I suppose it’s unavoidable. But, they are expected to pay taxes and refrain from subverting the democratic values that govern community policy decisions. In owning politicians and judges, they are evil. In writing laws to enrich themselves, they are evil. Their evil should be contained to as small an area of influence, as possible.
LikeLike
I’ve met a few of these young “educators”, like E4E. They are usually smart enough to see that they wouldn’t last in a real classroom with real students. But they have chosen education as a career, so they find positions away from the real action, and act like they have some vast knowledge of education.
It reminds me of the lieutenants right out of the academy who get into combat situations and, at first, think they know more than the old sarge and seasoned soldiers.
LikeLike
Perhaps those young “educators” need to be fragged.
(rhetorically, that is.)
LikeLike
Believe me, “fragged” is what I was thinking. A young, E4E type principal once dismissively told me that, as an older teacher, I just did things the “old way”. After that, I sat back and watched the debacle of “new ways”. The whole school had to live through a series of rookie mistakes for two years.
Do they really think we haven’t learned something from experience?
LikeLike
Kris – Not unless your experience was you graduated from an IV.
LikeLike
Here in NYC, where E4E was originally spawned with Gates money, they have always functioned as fifth columnists among teachers, posing as educators – most of these people at most had a cup of coffee in the classroom – while in fact operating to undermine their working conditions and be an echo chamber for high stakes testing and so-called reform. Their initial efforts here, which failed like everything else they touch, attempted to do away with seniority.
After all, why would seniority protections matter to people who never for an instant had any intention of staying in the classroom, and whose relationships with urban students is limited to using them as props in publicity photos?
At the moment, these counterfeit educators are trying to infiltrate the union, and get deluded or ignorant teachers to run as school Chapter Leaders, but people see through their facade, and recognize these arrogant, entitled faux-meritocrats for the dupes and snakes they are.
LikeLike
“… people who never for an instant had any intention of staying in the classroom, and whose relationships with urban students is limited to using them as props in publicity photos?” That is spot-on, Michael.
My biggest concern? I have two grandchildren who are negotiating this mess in an effort to get an education and still remain happy young people. I cringe when I think of how these E4E types will reduce them to data points.
LikeLike
And monetized data points, at that…
LikeLike
They came to my school under the guise of providing a workshop o interpreting data. They lost my interest when they said teaching jobs should go to “younger teachers because they have more energy and spunk.” I took it personally as I’ve been “around” 37 years. Very scary people.
LikeLike
We wouldn’t tolerate people coming into a school saying that all teaching jobs should go to white people or men. So why do we tolerate agism? We should take it more than personally. We should absolutely call them on their bigotry.
The young ones are saying it, but they are being manipulated as well. They don’t cost as much now. But wait until they have accrued some experience. Then they will be expendable as well.
LikeLike
We didn’t and asked them to leave as we left. We honestly thought they were coming in to share ideas about interpreting data. We won’t be fooled again!
LikeLike
Now the Los Angeles Times quotes them as “a teacher advocacy group.” http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-superintendent-king-20170109-story.html
LikeLike
Carl, they advocate against teachers.
LikeLike
I pointed out their agenda in the comments section. Unfortunately, the average reader of the Times is not going to know that fact.
LikeLike