Monday – Dueling Orgs: GEM Real Reformers With Weiner vs. E4E Ed Deformers With Walcott

This post will be added to later since I am in no shape to complete it after a late Saturday night at Steely Dan - and what a concert it was but after getting to bed near 2pm and up at 6:30, there isn't much left. However this one has been in my mind for some time and I wanted to get started.

Dennis Walcott attempts to take E4E off life support!

Where will you be Monday? Weiner or Walcott? Real Reform or Ed Deform?

If there was one event you should go to, that is the GEM meeting with Lois Weiner as the guest speaker to demonstrate that there is major interest in Real Reform vs the Ed Deform being pushed by E4E and its guest speaker Dennis Walcott. Let's get an audience that can hold its own.

Today, dueling meetings between GEM and E4E will be taking place an hour and a block apart.

The Real Reformers of GEM will be holding their monthly meeting at 5PM at the Community Church of NY (40 East 35 St, between Madison and Park) with Lois Weiner as the speaker talking about the global assault on teachers and their unions (which is the title of her book). I saw Lois do her presentation years ago and it was an AHA moment where she ties in shock doctrine on educators world wide. What I like about it is how the UFT/AFT leadership narrow misleading of the members by blaming Klein or Bloomberg for the issues we face is exposed.  See the top of the side panel for Lois' powerpoint and some news of her speech in LA. Also the post below this for the formal announcement.

We really want your bodies at the GEM meeting: a) because we love you b) because you will walk out with the tools in your head to argue down all those conservative anti-teacher family yokels you have to deal with - maybe even next week at Rosh Hashonnah dinner and c) to demo that real groups like GEM can draw people.

At 6:30 or so, Ed Deformers E4E will be meeting at CUNY just down the block with Ed Deformer in Chief Dennis Walcott, who is trying to pump up the dying group that cannot survive without infusions of cash from outside agencies to support their staff of 5 and their offices. Naturally, the pro ed deform media has seized on E4E and other so-called teacher reform groups to pump up the empty balloon.

I'll get into the articles on E4E later in the day in this post or in a separate one. Why do I say they are a faux organization? Their numbers of so-called members which is a national list is stagnant. I know this because loads of people signed their pledge just to be on the mailing list. South Bronx School did a bit of analysis of the numbers:

Three thousand? So how many of these are NYC teachers? If all 3,000 are NYC teachers that gives E4E .03947368% of all teachers in NYC that support E4E. Now considering that I have signed up twice, many others have so how is this a movement? The E4E Facebook page shows just 1,828 friends. So even if these are all NYC teachers, which they are not, that shows a percentage of .02471053%. E4E is just a steamroller.

E4E got slammed when so many of their so-called supporters were denied tenure or had their tenure extended, many on unfair grounds. See Jeff Kaufman's report on how E4Eers at his school had tenure denied for bogus reasons. How did they feel about the organization whose pledge to make tenure much harder to obtain they signed?

E4E even had to cancel a few events this summer for lack of interest.

They had a Sept. 14 event planned but that disappeared too, replaced by the Walcott event on Sept. 19, the same day and at the same location (CUNY) where GEM usually meets (though we're not meeting there this time). I'm betting they get the auditorium which costs some serious money – unless there was some pressure applied to give them the space. But why should E4E worry - they have sugar daddies.

The media black out real groups like GEM, NYCORE, Teachers Unite, and New Teacher Underground while humping Faux "teacher" group E4E.

When a reporter who was doing a story on E4E called me for comment I raised the issue of how an organization funded by DFER and Bill Gates gets credence while real organizations organizing within basically the same pool – newer teachers to teachers with about a dozen years in the system – gets blacked out. The response was a lame, "E4E has influenced policy, referencing the teacher evaluation law they like to take credit for. I practically leaped over the phone: "Are you saying you actually believe THEY influenced policy and not DFER and Gates and the rest of the ed deformers who are using them as a front group to undermine the union from within?"

MORE LATER

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Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.