Reprinted from the NJEA Reporter, October 2003
(Second of a Series)
With a focus on the state's Abbott districts, E3 peddles misinformation to the public
It's a name meant for marketing: Excellent Education for Everyone. Who could argue with that?
But E3, as it is called, has emerged as a serious threat to public education in New Jersey's. Its website claims its goal is to "improve" public schools, but E3 is the New Jersey front group for a nationwide voucher movement backed by right-wing money dedicated to the privatization of public education. It receives $500,000 a year from the pro-voucher Walton Foundation, run by Wal-Mart heir John Walton.
Its adherents use the language of the pro-voucher, anti-public school movement. Demands for parental "choice" and "competition" to force public schools to improve permeate its literature, and its founder, Moorestown businessman Peter Denton, is quoted on the E3 website as saying that "as long as public education is a monopoly, it will never reform itself from within."
The Newark-based E3 was founded in 1999 by Denton and Cory Booker, who ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Newark in 2001. Its executive director is West Orange PR man Dan Gaby.
The E3 website offers links to scores of conservative and right-wing think tanks and foundations, including the Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation of Indianapolis, which provides funding for "fact-finding" tours of Milwaukee voucher schools for parents and community leaders. E3 has been sponsoring such tours for several years now.
E3 is moving aggressively in New Jersey's urban Abbott districts, where E3 community organizers are recruiting African-American and Hispanic parents, religious leaders, and politicians to their cause. On Sept. 11, the Camden City Council passed an E3-backed resolution urging the state Legislature to students in schools that fail to make "Adequate Yearly Progress" under the Bush Administration's "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) act.
E3 is also organizing in Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Trenton, West Orange, Plainfield, Elizabeth, Passaic, Orange, and New Brunswick. It runs ads in minority newspapers recruiting volunteers, and is actively courting the state's minority organizations. In addition:
- E3 had a booth at last year's Black Issues Convention, where it sponsored a workshop marketing vouchers as a "civil right."
- Its statewide conference last November attracted 400 people, including former commissioners of education Saul Cooperman and Leo Klagholtz.
- E3 regularly demonizes NJEA, telling parents it is the "Goliath" standing in their way. E3 has urged parents to tell NJEA to "go to hell."
It has also circulated bogus "research" claiming that two-thirds of New Jerseyans support vouchers. E3 purchased a question on a poll conducted by the Eagleton Institute of Rutgers asking New Jerseyans if they supported vouchers for the "public, private, or religious school of their choice." The Eagleton pollster admitted to NJEA that including the word "public" renders the results meaningless in gauging support for vouchers for private and religious schools, but E3 markets it as "proof" that vouchers have support.
E3 regularly relies on misleading information to make its case. When confronted with data showing the vast majority of private schools would not accept voucher students if they had to accept special needs students or administer state assessments, Gaby replied that E3's legislation would mandate such accountability. No problem.
And E3's website contains a page titled - 14 Myths supporters of the public school monopoly continue to promote... even though proven false." NJEA's website now has a point-by-point rebuttal of those -myths," exposing E3's misleading "facts." (See http://www.njea.org/Issues/vouchers.asp).
E3's ultimate goal is to build a broad coalition of urban minority parents, Catholic parents, and middle-class suburbanites to demand vouchers from the Legislature. It has indicated it plans to do so within two years - perfectly timed to coincide with two years of news about "failing schools" under the NCLB act.
NJEA is working hard to counter the E3 threat, mobilizing members and parents to support public schools. Stay tuned, because E3 isn't going away.
NEXT MONTH: - The Cost of Vouchers: how vouchers are funded; their impact where they've been tried; where their funding would come from, and what they'd cost New Jersey.