California blogger “RedQueeninLA” reviews the contest between Marshall Tuck and Tom Torlakson for state superintendent and concludes that Tuck is unfit for the office.
Tuck is the candidate of the power elite, the billionaires who cynically employ fake rhetoric about “it’s all for the kids,” when their real goal is to demonize teachers and invest in technology. They have zero commitment to public education as a civic responsibility.
Tuck comes from the world of investment banking. His education experience at Green Dot Charter Schools and at former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa’s takeover schools was a failure. On that ground alone–his dismal experience–he should be disqualified.
But his greatest liability is his contempt for public education. With him at the helm, public school students would have no advocate in Sacramento. But the oligarchs would.
On behalf of the power elite, Marshall Tuck is running a:
“professionally organized, PR-driven, fact- and experience-free, 1%-obsessed campaign. With relentless repetition their agenda is focused on issues to degrade the influence of organized labour and drive the market predominance of high technology. The challenger, Marshall Tuck, simply blusters through one Big Lie after another, disingenuously claiming to be all about “the children” when in fact this is seemingly the opposite of his agenda. Marshall Tuck’s resume offers no evidence to suggest children’s best interests are the focus of his attention. What all these billionaire-backed candidates – whether Sanchez I v Kayser, Anderson v Zimmer, Sanchez II v Ratliff, or Johnson v McKenna – is about, is the corporate interests of their paymasters.”
Will the 1% buy the state superintendents’ job in California? Will Tuck–the puppet of the oligarchs–win despite his record of failure? Will the public ignore his contempt for public schools and their teachers?
Or will they see through the mask of power politics and reject his deceptive and divisive rhetoric?
I hope that the voters choose Tom Torlakson, a veteran educator who will truly fight for the kids, their teachers, and their public schools.
The race in California is a test of democracy? Can the voters be hoodwinked by Big Lies and Big Money?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
Marshall Tuck is dumping huge $ 10 million worth of lies during the last seven days of the campaign.
Torlakson just sent out this email:
——————————-
“Tom Torlakson for State Superintendent of Public Instruction2014
“Friends,
“It’s the oldest trick in the cynic’s political playbook: wait until the last week, then fill the airwaves with misleading attack ads.
“The school privatizers and anti-pension forces know they can’t win an honest debate about the future of our schools. They know a Wall Street investment banker with no teaching credential and no professional classroom experience isn’t qualified for the job of state superintendent.
“That’s why they’re spending nearly $8 million to defeat me. Don’t let them buy this election and sell out our schools. Click here to donate $50 or more right now:
https://tomtorlakson.nationbuilder.com/donate_to_tom
“The time to act is now. Cast your absentee ballot – and mail it in today. Take the pledge to support our campaign and our schools – and encourage your family and friends to support me as well.
If we stand together for the future of public education, their cynical tactics will backfire. Join me, and the teachers, parents, school employees, and more than 100 education leaders across California who support me. Help us in this last week by donating $50 right now.
“Because every school is worth investing in, but not one is for sale.
“Tom Torlakson Signature
“Contribute to Tom
https://tomtorlakson.nationbuilder.com/donate_to_tom
“Follow Tom on Facebook Follow Tom on Twitter
Paid for by Tom Torlakson for State Superintendent of Public Instruction 2014, ID #1333916
“Tom Torlakson for State Superintendent of Public Instruction 2014 · CA, United States
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If you want to volunteer,
http://www.tomtorlakson.com/volunteer
And here’s Torlakson’s official campaign website:
http://www.tomtorlakson.com/
Here’s Torlakson’s plan for great schools”
http://www.tomtorlakson.com/blueprint
There are myriad reasons to vote for educator Tom Torlakson instead of Wall Street banker Marshall Tuck. One of the most compelling is that he broke the statues known as the California Education Code, and was guilty of violating student and parent civil rights. https://www.scribd.com/doc/243731079/Smoking-Gun-Marshall-Tuck-Violated-Student-and-Parent-Civil-Rights
Here is my article published yesterday on ChalkFace, thanks Robert, with additional reasons Marshall Tuck should NOT be an influence on education in California, nor anywhere.
http://atthechalkface.com/2014/10/27/guest-commentary-on-marshall-tuck-by-joining-forces-for-educations-ellen-lubic/
=
Just to clarify, the “he” Ms Skeels references above is Tuck, not Torlakson — it is Tuck who breaks Edu Code and was found guilty of violating these civil rights… 🙂
Ah whoops — just to clarify the clarification — that would be “Mr” Skeels, not “Ms”… sorry, Robert!
cross posted at Quicklink: California: Why Marshall Tuck Should Not Be Elected State Superintendent; by Diane Ravitch | OpEdNewshttp://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/California-Why-Marshall-T-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Experience_Goal-141028-700.html
with this comment:
Business wants to monetarize the public institution of education that is integral to democracy and to the common good. The way that they doit is by seeing to it that the people at the top are NOT educators, because no professional educator would promote anti-learning policies.
It is THAT simple… no educators running the show… hence what you see in LAUSD
cross posted at
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/California-Why-Marshall-T-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Experience_Goal-141028-700.html
wit this comment
Business wants to monetarize the public institution of education that is integral to democracy and to the common good. The way that they doit is by seeing to it that the people at the top are NOT educators, because no professional educator would promote anti-learning policies.
It is THAT simple… no educators running the show… hence what you see in LAUSD.
FWIW, I posted a second piece about Tuck yesterday focusing on his supporters, of surprisingly limited number and infinite resources, plus familiar oligarchical name-and-occupation recognition:
http://redqueeninla.k12newsnetwork.com/2014/10/26/follow-those-checks-before-checking-off-your-ballot/
(please be patient if the link does not work. K12NN is having technical problems that should be resolved shortly – thx.)
Thanks Susan and Lloyd for reblogging on your sites. This is such a valuable help to educator writers, and parent/community writers, to get the word out exponentially.
With the many informed education articles on the California election written by primarily Robert, Sara, a few others, and me, you now have dispersed the multitude of reasons that Marshall Tuck is NO friend of public education, and is merely one more billionaire wannabe trying to privatize America’s free public schools.
Anything I can do to inform the public about the conspiracy to end public education.
RedQueen’s piece yesterday was excellent too. It lists all the sources of the money and then concludes thusly:
“Marshall Tuck is public school enemy #1, a doer in the quest to drain public school coffers into privately held charter school accounts. Tuck – whose name I hesitate to validate by typing it – is an Education Grifter (“edushyster“?), skilled at skimming the slick blades of astroturf rather than getting down into the weeds of what really makes a school work. His record is abysmal, his claims to success superficial. At best. But he is the anointed of the 1%, garnering one peculiar endorsement after another from papers that should be on record despising his ilk.”
If Tuck is so anti minorities, then why is he supporting the Vergara decision while Torlakson wants to appeal and keep the status quo? All major newspapers in California have endorsed Tuck. Torlakson gives honorary doctorates to undeserving administrators. What that’s all about, I have no idea, but I just can’t give Torlakson my vote.
Also, in one of the articles quoted in the comments, the writer does not seem to know much about the real happenings in Adelanto. Debra Tarver runs two, not one, charter school, and was chosen by parents for Desert Trails Prepatory by application and because her first, existing school was and still is doing so extraordinarily well. People who don’t live in the high desert of California have no idea how uneducated the public school board members are and how power hungry some of the administrators are. Also, they do not attract top teachers, and when they do, they don’t stay long in Adelanto, either. Adelanto schools have the lowest number of instructional minutes the state allows and only need to be on campus ten minutes before school and ten minutes after school. Neither do they have to do any campus supervision according to their contract. Pretty cushy if you ask me, and the kids are suffering.
Which articles quoted in the comments? For more on Adelanto try this:
http://capitalandmain.com/adelanto-report-card-year-zero-of-the-parent-trigger-revolution/
or this:
http://capitalandmain.com/high-noon-for-parent-trigger/
Are these the articles you were referring to? I think some of the challenges of the populations – teachers, students, administrators – in Adelanto and the surrounding region are fairly well spelled out in these articles. I believe it was mentioned that indeed Ms Tarver is in charge of more than one school. This, too, is considered with qualifications.
Correction: fourth line from bottom: The teachers need to be on campus ten minutes before and ten minutes after. All this according to their union contracts. Principals cannot give teachers positive comments on notes in walkthroughs. They will be grieved if not on union approved forms.
Would be nice if you identified your self, “changemaker”…perhaps you are Ben Austin or Gabe Rose.
Adelanto is one of the poorest districts in California with a community comprised mainly of Latino residents who work at poverty level wages. The tricks of Austin and company to get these mostly non English speaking parents to sign on to parent trigger is a tale that is all over the internet, Even the roster of simple signatures can be found. Now that this unique charterizing situation is a fait accompli, the Principal it is reported online, earns about $200,000 while credentialed teachers earn only about $36,000 which is almost at poverty level for a family of four. Why would any university trained and credentialed teacher want to work in this small desert town under these conditions?
So, it is also reported that some of the teachers are TFA kids, and some are not credentialed, but there on emergency documents. It is a very sad state of affairs, but Parent Revolution created this mess, so it would behoove you to question them about it.
Read both Robert Skeels and Redqueenia and my articles in the last 24 hours to get the facts about Tuck. His support of the Vergara case and the issues, do not mean that he, nor anyone involved with the plaintiffs, are fighting for civil rights. It means they are deeply into the pits of the Wall Street investors who seek to prosper with a takeover of public education for investor profit. Follow the money as this case evolved over a period of almost three years, with the plaintiffs being carefully selected and nurtured by their lawyers.
As to Torlakson, he has no authority to hire and fire teachers in Adelanto or anywhere in the state, and he cannot hand out real doctorates for he does not reperesent any teaching university. Your occasional inputs are generally so biased and full of misinformation that if you are Austin, or one of his flacks, you could use some PR training. Seriously, please tell us who you are and who you represent? You are surely not a teacher.
Tuck wants more testing, more charters, more fake accountability, more of stuff we often hear about. It seems that Tuck is definitely the “status quo” candidate. .
Torlakson wants to cut back on testing. Even though it didn’t get very far, he even advocated for graduated CCSS implementation. And he took on the Feds over CCSS implementation. I just don’t see Tuck doing those things.
Of course, Torlakson will get my vote. We have enough little dictators, like Tuck, out there who want accountability for everyone but themselves.
You sound just like an elitist changemaker, we unwashed masses should just accede to the policies of our betters. Torlakson realizes that tenure is not the problem in the schools. He also knows the the teachers in the Vergara case did not have tenure. Your argument betrays your lack of insight.
Please do a blog for Oklahoma. We have a public school superintendent with 30 years of service in public schools (Dr. John Cox-D) against a for-profit testing/tutoring CEO who supports CC and the expansion of charters & vouchers (Joy Hofmeister-R).
We have been fighting so hard to get rid of CC and to STOP the privatization of public schools in Oklahoma and if Joy wins, we will go BACKWARDS for the next 4+ years!
Check out this commercial for Marshall Tuck:
Mary Najera
This woman, Mary Najera, was a paid staffer with Parent Revolution for years, making a six-figure, or high five-figure salary, paid to privatize schools… not some poor minority parent telling a tear-jerker story about her impoverished son…
Ms, Najera ha since moved on to staff at the Extera Charter School Corporation—allied with Parent Revolution—where she’s still a paid corporate shill making a six-figure (or high five-figure) salary to, again, promote privatization of our schools, where schools will no longer be accountable or transparent to the public via democratically-elected school boards, and will not educate all the public.
Parent Revolution is an astroturf front group—a school privatization super-PAC, if you will—funded by billionaires who want to privatize our schools, and thus, they’re backing Marshall Tuck. If you got to its website, it looks like a grassroots assemblage of poor minorities pulling together, when, in its inception, Parent Revolutions was started by the Green Dot Charter Corporation to give the appearance of parent demand for privatization WHEN THERE IS NONE. Over the years, Parent Revolution has gotten over $100 million dollars from the usual suspects—Eli Broad, Bil Gates, the Walton Family, Michael Bloomberg… the same out-of-state moneyed forces now backing Marshall Tuck.
Education activist Robert D. Skeels accurately portrays Ms. Najera as “a hostile takeover specialist” in privatizing schools.
http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2011/04/readers-speak-out-on-ben-austin-parent.html
I just spoke to a teacher at the traditional public school, Lorena Street School, where one of the Extera Charter Schools (allied with Parent Revolution) was forcibly co-located on their campus. Despite a directive from the LAUSD board barring Exteran and her from doing so, Ms. Najera has actively attempted, with limited success, to poach students from Lorena Street, and move to Extera. The teacher I just spoke to claims that when the Extera and Lorena St. students both walk through the same entrance, Ms. Najera hands out candy ONLY to the Extera kids, and tell the Lorena St. kids, that they’ll get candy, too…. if they leave Lorena St, and move to Extera.
Sweet Jesus!
Like everything else about Marshall Tuck and his campaign, this above video featuring Ms. Najera is phonier than a Chinese redhead.
Oh, you want proof that this woman is a phony? Check out Mary Najera—in her capacity as a high-paid Parent Revolution staffer—engage in double talk outside a phony, public “community forum” meeting staged by Parent Revolution a few years ago with an appearance by then-Mayor Villaraigosa, a privatization ally. She makes the contradictory claim that the meeting is open to the public, followed by the claim that attendance is RSVP-only, then backtracking again, insisting that “it’s not private.”
Can’t you get your lies straight, Mary?
starting at 00:37
——————–
NAJERA: “It’s open to the public.”
PARENT: (off-screen) “This is NOT open to the public.”
NAJERA: “It’s not open to the public.”
PARENT: (off-screen) “It’s not open to the public?”
NAJERA: “NO… it’s RSVP.”
PARENT: (off-screen) “So it’s private?”
NAJERA: “No, it’s not private.”
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Watch the whole thing, and you see how inclusive Parent Revolution—and by extension, Marshall Tuck—actually is towards minority parents wanting a voice.
Check out creep-a-zoid Gabe Rose, a high-level staffer at Parent Revolution, making an appearance…
… at 02:50
When the parent cameraman sarcastically tells him, “Say ‘Hello’ to Steve Barr”—Barr was a Green Dot leader and privatizer… one of the ACTUAL Parent Revolution founders).
Not expecting this kind of resistance. Rose is visibly shaken. Indeed, Rose is not used to actual parents, not the stage-managed charter parents who have to appear as part of a charter school’s requirement of “volunteer hours.” Faced with the “real thing”, Rose makes some lame remark, “I will. Get over your weird obsession.”
“Weird obsession”? WTF, Gabe? The guy with the camera is a parent and he’s not “obsessed”; he’s outraged that Rose’s plastic-vinyl phony astroturf group Parent Revolution—falsely claiming to represent parents—is shutting out actual parents from the their fake “community forum” hosted by their ally Mayor Villaraigosa.
The wholesale deception that these folks engage in is really astonishing.
In Compton, their paid operatives went around claiming to be resident’s of Compton, and parents of children at the school targeted for Parent Trigger —McKinley Elementary—when they were all from out of town.
And then that video of Ben Austin telling the interviewer that the teachers in Compton were torturing children and forcing them to defecate on themselves if their parents signed the Parent Trigger petition.
In Adelanto, they pushed two petitions—one telling the promising parents the things they wanted; the latter a stealth petition for takeover by a private charter company. They threw the former in the trash, then submitted only the latter. Then when the parents who signed tried to rescind their signatures, Parent Revolution sicked high-powered lawyers on them.
And now this election where their candidate puts on a benign facade—he loves teachers and unions—when his goal is that of his funders: annihilation of unions. He keeps telling the same mislabelling of charter schools: “Charter schools are public schools.”
NO, NO, NO, NO… to infinity.
How can you combat people with absolutely no compunction about telling whatever lie they want to tell whenever they want to tell it?
And now, Ben’s predicting a Tuck victory will show that “the emperor (teachers’ unions) have no clothes.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/union-power-california-superintendent-112279.html
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“Ben Austin, a longtime Democratic operative who now runs an education reform group and backs Tuck, served up a more colorful metaphor. ‘A lot of thinking Democrats will wake up the morning after this (Torlakson/Tuck) election,’ he said, ‘and recognize that the emperor has no clothes.’ ”
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Wait a minute. Tuck says he’s a supporter of unions… all the teachers under his former leadership were unionized, blah-blah-blah…
But now in this Politico piece, his backer/fellow executive at Green Dot Ben Austin is salivating at the prospect of how Tuck’s election will lead the to the destruction of unions?
The people voting for Tuck will be doing so not because they’re die-hard union-haters, or born-again union critics. Most will be Democrats who naively side with the young, good-looking, caring Tuck. They’ll be voting for Tuck BECAUSE THEY WERE TRICKED INTO DOING SO by the tens of millions of dollars of money from out-of-state billionaires that was dumped into Tuck’s campaign. Those voters are not aware of the significance that Ben hopes to claim, if and when Tuck wins.
Even the deceptively mis-named “Democrats for Education Reform” was itself founded for the purpose of tricking Democratic voters and citizens into voting for and tacitly agreeing with a right-wing agenda that they otherwise would not. They’re not just attacking teachers’ unions; they’re attacking all unions, and attacking the middle and working classes as well.
In a divide and conquer move, once the teachers’ union and other publicly employee unions have been destroyed or significantly weakened, these dark forces will move on all workers—unionized or not—and lower their standard of living—salaries, health benefits, working conditions…
Vote for Tom Torlakson.
I work at Lorena and not only is Mary Najira now working at our school for Extera, but another woman in the video is as well! Mary is a despicable woman who calls herself a parent liason, when actually she trains parents to get their volunteer hours by poaching students from our school. We lost two teachers this year because of their unsavory tactics to gain students. They buy them with uniforms and even fill out their enrollment forms for them! Then, when parents aren’t happy and they try to leave, they lie and tell them that,”they don’t have the paperwork for that.” Every time I see Mary Najira, I seethe with anger. She is the worst of the charter movement! And if her ad is true and she is such a “revolutionary,” then where was she all those years when her son couldn’t read and hung out with the wrong crowd??
I don’t think that Tuck will win. Toklakson has been good and he is reasonable. He has a good reputation and has worked closely with Brown to restore funds to public schools. I have heard him speak twice and he understands quite a lot and most importantly he has taught for many years.
Oh Caligirl I hope you are right!! I am worried because so many (corporate run, all) newspapers have endorsed Tuck. I am worried because so few people have any clue whatsoever what this race is about or who any of these people are; they just do what the paper recommends.
I therefore recommend any and all to do a little consciousness-raising if you can at all…
Jack, wow. Were/are you at Lorena St? I remember that video from looking into Steve Barr and ParRev. Creepy in every single direction and dimension. How can anyone with half a heart not see this? So mystifying…
Jack…love you more and more. Robert’s info and the exposure of the phony video Latina mom, as actually a high paid Parent Rev exec, should be plastered everywhere.
I just sent out my Chalk Face article to about 50 friends, family, and university colleagues urging a vote for Torlakson, and I urge all readers here to do the same. We must support Tom through the grass roots connections we all have. Email everyone this Ravitch post and encourage them to pass it on to all their lists.
Agree with RedQ that the corporate, Murdoch and other Wall Sreet, biased papers could do much damage to Torlakson. Shocking to see them side with such a malicious, conniving, and mendacious twerp as Tuck.
I’m not from Lorena Street, but I know teachers there, including the UTLA Chapter Chair Adrian Tamayo (sp?), and they all tell me that the forced co-location of the Extera charter there has been a total on-going fiasco. For example, while the Lorena street administrators, staff, and teachers were pre-occupied with the 5th grader’s graduation (actually called “culmination”) ceremonies, Ms. Najera and their gang were openly proselytizing the Lorena Street parents, trying to recruit them over. They were telling the most ridiculous lies and outrageous scare tactics… if you stay at Lorena St, your child will have a 1% chance of going to college… if they leave and go to Extera, the chances will be 99% (it’s a new charter, so Extera has ZERO track record of kids attending college)…. and on and on… the parents are all low-income, most don’t speak English… and the Extera charter folks are taking advantage of that.
In the past, parents of a school that were faced with a possible co-location were given months of advance notice, per the Prop 39 law. When that happened, the public school parents then had time to protest, and often stop the co-location. Well, Deasy instructed LAUSD’s Charter Supervisor Jose Cole-Guttierez to stop this “advance notice” stuff. In the case of Lorena Street, the parents and community were told JUST ONE WEEK BEFORE SCHOOL STARTED… Extera’s moving in whether you like it or not. In spite of immediate and widespread protest, the co-location went ahead, and it’s been a total sh&% bath ever since.
Everything you have mentioned it true! Lorena was sold out!
I was at the co-location module of the recent UTLA Leadership Conference in mid-September. A contingent of teachers and parents from Lorena St. were exploding with anger and sadness… ending up in tears at times… in describing Extera’s tactics, and the damaging effects Extera has had on both the school and the school community. Extera will do whatever it wants to do, tell whatever lies it wants to tell… and there’s no real consequence from LAUSD for doing so.
Extera has the mindeset:… “Will anything bad happen to us if we do all this evil stuff? Naaah, not really…. so let’s keep doing it!” They essentially have the moral development of a nine-year-old, or a sociopathic, insatiable, expanding corporation.
If the Board gave them a warning: “Hey Extera. If you don’t stop all this… if we have credible proof that you’re still doing all this, we’re revoking your charter, and June 30th, 2015 will be your last day,” and then stuck to it… you’d see some improvement in their behavior.
At an LAUSD Board meeting, a contingent of Lorena St. parents were furious at what was going on. The head of Extera, Mr. Kennedy, told Board Member Bennett Kayser that those Ms. Najera and the others who were improperly recruiting parents were just “over-zealous” and “didn’t know any better.” Kayser said, “Well, as a sign of good faith, can you promise us here today that this will stop, and that you will do whatever is necessary to get your people to stop.” Kennedy says, “Yes,” then basically continued what the improper behavior.
As it is, the Extera folks ignore what’s told to them and/or they make some phony promise to stop, then just keep doing whatever they want.
They CAN BE STOPPED. On the other side of town in Mar Vista, a group of parents at Stoner Elementary successfully kicked out another outrageously misbehaving charter yet powerful, Citizens of the World. The parents group there have a blog that details the whole process from beginning to end:
http://cwcmarvista-co-location-stoner-lausd.blogspot.com/
The first blog post of the resistance was last January here:
http://cwcmarvista-co-location-stoner-lausd.blogspot.com/2014_01_01_archive.html
Read the whole story… from January to October… it’s a stunner.
G-d! LAUSD is just a pit of corruption.
Here in NY, Elen, The Times is celebrating Joel Klein who sent the professionals on a one way trip to the rubber rooms.
Yes, Susi Lee…there is rampant corruption here, and probably everywhere. But the actual for-profit operators who pretend they are running public schools which are only called charters, while they rake in the big bucks we taxpayers are mandated to donate to them, are often true crooks and could be prosecuted under RICO statutes. Many are being investigated by the FBI, and if the IRS hops in with charges that they are not scrupulously following non profit structures, the law, then they should be prosecuted.
It is my belief that all parochial schools should not have 501c3 status for they teach religion as catechism, not comparative religion as philosophy. For this same reason, I do not believe that houses of worship should be operating tax free, since most inculcate political views.
I agree. In 50 years, people will look back at the destruction of public schools and see the fraud… or maybe not. Look at the ‘banksters’. Yes, Holder is going after some of them, but the destruction they wrought is really hidden.
I’ve often thought about how this era will be viewed decades from now. If you could get in the BACK TO THE FUTURE DeLorean and go ahead to the 2020’s or 2030’s or beyond, I predict that you would see the following.
This “Education Reform Era” will be viewed with the same disgust and shame that we now view…
— the Salem Witch Trials
— the Japanese internment during World War II
— the hysterical, anti-Communist blacklist
— the Vietnam War
— Gulf War II, or George W’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and all that followed
or, to go to another country…
— the mid-1960’s “Cultural Revolution” in Communist China.
Regarding the blacklist comparison, Michelle Rhee and her ilk will be viewed in the same light at Joe McCarthy and his enablers.
Regarding the Vietnam war comparison, Arne Duncan will be viewed in the same light at Robert McNamara (and others) who claimed that he was fighting the spread of god-less Communism, yet fronting for DuPont, the Defense industry, and other corporations that were enriched by the U.S. occupation of Vietnam.
In Arne’s case, he’s claiming that unlike the greedy, lazy teachers, he and his allies are the people who truly care “about the kids” (i.e. his sickening statement in support of the Vergara lawsuit), when he’s actually doing the bidding of the money-motivated privatizers and union-busters.
These vulture capitalists constantly need more and fresh “financial flesh” devour. After enriching themselves during the dot-com era and the dot-com bubble exploded in the late 1990’s, they moved on to Wall Street, demanding de-regulation and decreased oversight (and we know how well THAT turned out … Remember the meltdown of September 2008?)… and then also pushed George W. to implement de-regulation and decreased oversight of the housing and loan industry, and they got rich during the sub-prime loan bubble… and now that they’ve drained every drop from those spheres, it’s those same folks who now see the trillion-dollar public education sector as ripe for raping.
Go watch the DVD of “THE WOLF OF WALL STREET”… those are the folks that seek to profit from the privatization of public education… witness their motives, greed, mocking cynicism, and despicable tactics… and they’ve got Arne Duncan, neo-liberal Democrats, and the media (idiots like Campbell Brown) fronting for them… claiming that these billionaires and Wall Street hedge fund managers care more about the well-being of children of the middle and working classes than the over-worked, poorly-compensated teachers who spent 7 or more hours every ding-dong day dedicating their lives to those same children.
Hidden behind all the profit, is the move to create an ignorant citizenry which will not know real science or history, and will succumb to propaganda. Also, a polarized society with no way for the masses to have access to opportunity that comes with learning the skills, is the object. This is 1939, where a stressed ignorant population buys ‘leadership’ sold to them by dictators who control the media.
Diane ravitch comes out swinging against Tuck. Spread this to voters via email.
VOTED for TUCK! It’s about time someone advocates for students’s choice rather than the teachers’ union.
Well aren’t you a dumb and pathetic voter, JH….looks like the preponderance of California prefers teachers and public schools, and yes, teachers unions, to the phony Marshall Tuck.
We seem to have won folks…even though it is only approaching midnight PT, Torlakson seems to be safely in the lead.
Hooray. Now I can finally go to sleep.
Good comment, Ellen, but the union the problem, because if they actually represented teachers according to the LAW, then the best teachers would still be teaching.
And you are soooo proud at being conned by the media owned by the Koch Brothers and clones, that you actually believe that the unions are the problem?
Listen, I have a bridge to sell, cheap to anyone who is so unaccustomed to the truth.
The CA School system is awful, the Teacher’s Union is putting its own interests over those of children, and in this mess of bad policy and failure, the charter schools are a shining beacon of success. I voted for Tuck and after reading this, Im especially glad I did.