The egregious non teacher E4E leader Evan Stone declares insanely, “I am not satisfactory! I am excellent!”
Educators 4 Excellence is nothing if not an extraordinary organization. It is so because it is simultaneously astoundingly arrogant, totally devious and utterly pathetic. But what else, really, can you expect from a organization that pretends to be a grassroots collection of teachers but whose real reason for existence is to insidiously further the will of their sugar daddy, private citizen Bill Gates and his hedge fund pals in their relentless campaign to privatize the public school system? What else can you say about a group of teachers whose leaders taught for two or three years (now living quite cozily on Gates Foundation welfare) and believe they have figured out how best to teach and run entire school systems? How else can you define a group of teachers who blather on about desiring “excellence” but whose every policy is a shameless echo of every education hustle and fad in the land? How can you possibly respect a group of teachers who are so empty and lacking in self awareness that they believe the only way they can improve as teachers is to have principals, an increasing percentage of whom have little or no educational experience at all, provide them with constant “feed back? “
How can you take seriously a group of teachers who are so ignorant (or pretend to be so ignorant) that they look stunned when you inform them that every dime of the $30 million Race to the Top extortion money will be spent, not on teachers and schools, but on consultants and corporations and other lucky players in the Corporate Education Industrial Complex. How can you not find reprehensible a group of teachers who rally, not for their fellow teachers who are being hounded and demoralized and degraded by an increasingly insane system, nor for their beloved students whose schools are being shut down and communities disrupted, but for the teacher’s union to immediately agree to an evaluation system riddled with mechanisms designed to destroy the careers of their fellow teachers?
What really can you say about people who, in the face of the greatest assault on public education in American history, gather in a park on a Sunday afternoon to bellow idiocies such as “We want a deal! “ and ‘ I am not satisfactory! I am excellent!” And “ We crave feedback” , in a desperate attempt to please those committing said assault who are simultaneously their financial backers ?
What can one conclude about the authenticity of any organization whose membership is infinitesimal and whose every policy is a crude re-writing of union busting corporate education reform policies yet it granted instant credibility and glowing press reports and editorials in the New York Post and Fox News right out of the egg?
What can you possibly say about the integrity of a teacher who claims he left teaching and joined the leadership of the E4E, not because it infinitely easier and more lucrative than teaching, but because he just couldn’t bear to work under the present evaluation system any longer ?
How can you not find despicable an organization of teachers who would if they could leave teachers with as many rights as an employee of McDonald’s while feeding their students a steady diet of test prep because this is what their hidden backers, billionaires and hedge fund managers, have required them to do ?
Such is the farce, the disgusting and devious farce, called Educators 4 Excellence.
Addendum: What follows is a post containing the ridiculous pretense for the ridiculous rally. Like the statements on the signs shown above, it speaks for itself.
Here is a quote from my recent blog post about the event that explains why I am rallying:“We are the change makers. We are the ones that turn non-readers into lovers of books, a writer of simple sentences into an essayist. We can use those same skills to be a part of this conversation and policy-making. This is why I am attending E4E’s “Move Beyond Satisfactory” rally this Sunday at City Hall. The rally is our chance to tell the DOE and the UFT that teachers want a better evaluation system administered by school leaders who are well trained to support our teaching.”
Raginghorseblog 
December 5, 2012 at 6:29 pm
It is shameful how these E$Es behave as spoiled, priviledged brats that Gates has done nothing else but inflate their egos. Evan Stone has an “Excellent” ego, where haughtiness for him can never be satisfactory.
This reminds me of those having feet of clay:
“Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. ”
Oh yes, they shall fall because of their character flaws.
December 5, 2012 at 10:38 pm
They have no concern for anyone but themselves. They have no interest in teaching as a career. They have no understanding of labor history and no interest in learning. They are the perfect fools for a monster like Gates.
December 4, 2012 at 6:45 am
Truly bizarre. I guess somewhere in labor history there is a precedent for E4E…. but at the moment I can’t think of one.
I’m guessing they do this for M$M attention. (i.e. Fox, etc.). But do they actually get coverage?
It would be funny if it weren’t so….. you know…. *strange*.
December 4, 2012 at 6:51 am
Strange and ugly, Paul.
December 3, 2012 at 10:19 pm
So many contradictory statements here. Bill Gates is both sugar daddy and profiteer? The man donated the bulk of his wealth to charity and is spending it trying to fix a broken system. You may disagree with his means and analysis, but to criticize his motives just makes you look foolish. If you run the numbers, it’s literally impossible for him to be motivated by profit, because he’s donating more to education efforts than the size of the entire for-profit education industry!
Intelligent people can criticize reform efforts, but this is pure ad hominem blather. The education system is broken. Either recommend specific reforms or get out of the way of the people who are trying to fix it.
December 4, 2012 at 10:48 am
Nobody on this side of the Gates billions looks half as foolish as this band of ninnies in their green hats running up and down like French peasants as the Bastille fell demanding more power to the aristocracy. Is Gates living in a teepee somewhere now or did he manage to squirrel away a few sheckels for ramen noodles, mac and cheese and a metro bus pass to get him to the health clinic? Gimmee a break will ya? Your blather is not even ad hominem its worshipful and mindless. What arte Gates’ motives anyway? To destroy teachers unions and install his own little microsoft of an education system where once again he is the boss and genius and nobody but Bill knows anything. He can stick to CPUs and motherboards and leave teaching to people who have been doing while he was cornering the market. You canna worship this megalomaniac go right ahead but don’t tell us we have to too.
December 4, 2012 at 11:06 am
Very nicely put Sean. It is truly pathetic to see presumably free and sophisticated people degrade themselves by praising a manipulative monopolist who is doing everything in his considerable power to undermine our already anemic democracy.