Educators 4 Excellence: Dying Embers

Losing Traction, Pleas for People to Come to Free Screening Tonight. Are Sydney and Evan about to abandon the NYC ship? Will Bill Gates and Joe Williams ask for their money back?

Ed Notes and our pal at South Bronx School (who has been relentless in his assault) have been pointing to the lack of traction E4E has been getting despite ed deform funding, enormous publicity and backing from the Department of Education. We pointed to the poor turnout at their Sept. 19 event when Walcott brought along his top deputies (Shael, Weiner and more) to try to pump some life into E4E. That Sept. 23 post - E4E: 3000 Members, 2900 Don't Show - Walcott And C... was one of the most popular.

But the ed deform attempts to undermine teacher unions from within has not been going well - see Mike Klonsky on Rhambo's failure in Chicago. (Thankfully, the CTU didn't take Zorn's advice).

We surmised that E4E's push to eliminate LIFO (last in first out) and make tenure very tough to get rebounded on them when many of their supporters were denied tenure or had their tenure extended while seeing the next crop of teachers coming into their schools to replace older teachers - you know, like the 26 year-olds. Seeing so many unfair denial of tenure for political instead of educational reasons - principals who want to demonstrate how tough they are - turned many E4E sympathizers on to the benefits of LIFO.

In addition, their initial crop of supporters, mainly from Teach for America, began to fulfill their 2-year term and are leaving. So they have to continually renew their organizing. Believe me, as someone trying to organize teachers for 40 years, we don't waste time worrying about the people likely to leave - focusing instead on career teachers, the very crew groups like E4E and TFA shun with their "abandon the children you claim you care so much about so you can go make and influence educational policy."

Of course the fact they can hire 3 or 4 organizers gives them a leg up - imagine if GEM could do that - we could actually break the UFT Administration (our new term for the people running the union) blackout of our movie.

E4E tried to pack the Education Nation forum - I even received an email a teacher in Kansas City making that point - every one of them made sure to mention E4E when they spoke - asking where was GEM? I responded, GEM are real teachers and have better things to do than waste a Sunday promoting themselves - though I made sure to mention GEM when I asked a question to challenge Michelle Rhee on her big DC cheating scandal at Monday's panel.

In their latest update, E4E is still offering free tickets to tonight's screening of American Teacher:

E4E is hosting a free screening of "American Teacher", a new documentary, TOMORROW, Thursday, October 6 at 7:00 PM. Matt Damon narrates the film, which is based on a book about teacher salaries by novelist Dave Eggers. After the screening, the director will join us for a discussion.  

• Where: AMC Empire 25, 243 W. 42nd Street near 8th Avenue
• When: Thursday, October 6 at 7:00 PM
• RSVP: Join us for a free screening of American Teacher!

How funny. GEM is holding a free screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" on Oct. 14 and our guest speaker is the star of American Teacher, Jamie Fidler, a Real Reformer who has taught for almost a decade in elementary school in Brooklyn.

If you sign up, E4E insists not only on your signing the loyalty oath, but extracting every bit of info they can get out of you. Think the violation of privacy they demand is a put-off?

SBS has an inside source at E4E and his latest is revealing, claiming his source says S&E are thinking of relocating to Los Angeles:

According to our source deep inside E4E both Little Evan and Princess Sydney are disappointed not only with the lack of a groundswell supporting them and E4E, but the lack of headway they have made. Think about it, all the major initiatives they have proposed have all hit the ground with a tremendous thud. Nice way to spend all of Bill Gates' hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Read it all: Educators4Excellence 90210

SHOW ED DEFORMERS YOU SUPPORT A REAL REFORM MOVIE: 

OCT. 14 IS YOUR CHANCE. WE DON'T ASK FOR LOYALTY OATHS OR FOR YOU TO REVEAL EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION INCLUDING YOUR UNDERWEAR SIZE TO GET FREE ENTRY

Meet Jamie Fidler and other RRs. 

And if you'd like a copy of this to post in your school, email me at normsco@gmail.com

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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 the right for important bits.