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Our Purpose

Our nation’s education system is leaving millions of students—including an overwhelming number of students of color and low-income students—unprepared for college, career, and life. Only one in 10 students of color and low-income students graduates from college in the United States. The result is an opportunity gap and divide along racial and class lines that threatens the future of our communities, economy, and democracy.

While research shows that classroom teachers are the single most important in-school factor in improving student achievement, their diverse voices are consistently left out of education policy decisions. Even though policymakers at every level of the system are talking about teachers, they rarely are talking with teachers.

For far too long, teachers have been treated as subjects of change rather than as agents of change.

Founded by public school teachers, Educators for Excellence is a growing movement of more than 30,000 educators, united around a common set of values and principles for improving student learning and elevating the teaching profession. We work together to identify issues that impact our schools, create solutions to these challenges, and advocate for policies and programs that give all students access to a quality education.

Our Vision

Educators for Excellence envisions an equitable and excellent education system that provides all students the opportunity to succeed and elevates the teaching profession.

Our Mission

Educators for Excellence ensures that teachers have a leading voice in the policies that impact their students and profession.

Our Core Values

We are a community of leaders united in our commitment to students and teachers, drawing upon our personal experiences with a connection to educational inequity. All of our work, actions, decisions, and goals are driven by the belief that every child deserves an excellent education and, in order to achieve this, we must elevate the quality and prestige of the teaching profession.

Even though our work is urgent, we believe how we work is just as important as what we are working to accomplish. Our core values guide how we fulfill our mission, in partnership with teachers and on behalf of students.

  • Respect and Professionalism: We act with personal responsibility, respect, and commitment to high quality work, to our organization and to each other.
  • Solutions-Orientation: We consistently approach even the most complex challenges with positivity, proactive solutions, and the assumption of best intentions.
  • Growth Mindset: We intentionally create opportunities to develop ourselves and others in order to learn and continuously improve.
  • Dynamic Leadership: We courageously take ownership, empower others, set bold visions, think strategically, and adapt to change.
  • Diversity and Inclusiveness: Educational inequity is linked to race, power, and privilege, and so we take action to shift this paradigm by reflecting on our own identities, creating an inclusive and diverse community, and leveraging our differences as strengths.

Annual Report

Our annual reports chronicle E4E teachers’ leadership in the policy and advocacy arenas, their successes, and the expansion of E4E across the country.

You can download our annual reports here:




2022 – 2023



2021 – 2022



2020 – 2021



  2019 – 2020


2018 -2019



2017 – 2018




2016 – 2017




2015 -2016




2014 – 2015

To learn more about the work E4E and its members are doing today, check out our Chapters.