Paul Karrer, a veteran teacher in Castroville, explains why Californians should not vote for Marshall Tuck, who is a candidate for state superintendent. He represents the tiny but fabulously wealthy hedge fund managers who want to destroy public education. With backing from the powerful charter school industry, he has garnered endorsements from newspapers across the state, despite his lack of any accomplishment in education.
Karrer writes in The Herald of Monterrey:
I want to weep when noneducators use the destructive words and framing of those who would destroy public education. The Herald writes, “Tuck led Green Dot public schools in L.A., garners support from charter operators, and even tech companies along with wealthy backers who champion reform. He supports merit pay for teachers, and using student test scores as a means to evaluate teachers.”
None of those things are good!
He add, referring to Tuck’s experience at the Green Dot charter chain:
Green Dot Charter Schools: It is a student-skimming charter operation where parents or guardians who care opt their students into the school — meaning the kids are not the bottom of the bottom of the bottom. Outlier kids are booted, the teaching staff has quit en masse, and $15 million (double the normal federal investment dollars amount) had to be infused to make the venture survive. Slick charterists get public schools condemned and then Green Dot moves in to make money. Green Dot claims the scores go up (*see below). However, scores are only marginally increased (if that) and only if one massages the numbers with carefully selected framing. But they should, with all the low-performance and disabled kids who were not attending the school.
By the way, when a business is designated as not-for profit, grab your wallet and tighten up because intellectually you may be in for a nonconsensual act. Not-for-profit is merely an IRS filing. It means nothing morally or ethically. Many not-for-profit businesses choke their board of directors with obscene salaries, like Green Dot does.
Wealthy supporters: Hedge fund managers, or technocrats who although very successful in the world of finance have no clue about education. And they think a spreadsheet leads to all worldly answers and profits.
Bottom line: Vote for Tom Torklakson, not flashy, but a real educator.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a retired educator, I am voting for Tuck, mainly because Torlakson doesn’t care about our most poverty stricken areas and gave an honorary doctorate to an undeserving administrator (can he even do that?). Why is he trying to overturn the Vergara decision and refusing to listen to the voice of the students? Why has every major newspaper endorsed Tuck? Because our system is broken, and many are hoping Tuck will make needed change. We’re 45th in the nation in reading and math!
Here is my answer to changemaker…why I would NEVER vote for Marshall Tuck. This article was published at many online venues including Chalk Face, k12newnetwork,Hemlock on the Rocks, etc.
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Musings from the Chalk Face / Guest Commentary on Marshall Tuck by Joining Forces for Education’s Ellen Lubic
Guest Commentary on Marshall Tuck by Joining Forces for Education’s Ellen Lubic
October 27, 2014 by Robert D. Skeels * rdsathene 3 Comments
Joining Forces for Education was formed in response to Ben Austin’s public school bulldozer outfit, the Walton Family Foundation funded Parent Revolution. Ellen Lubic occasionally contributes to Professor Ravitch’s site.
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The Real Marshall Tuck, and Why He Insures My Vote for Tom Torlakson for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction
The Real Marshall Tuck, Wall Street Banker (Skeels comment)
Now that the billionaires such as Eli Broad and the Walton Family, and their cohorts working to privatize America’s public schools for their own profit, have zeroed in on self appointed and self identifying education expert, Marshall Tuck, and have poured multi millions of dollars into his campaign for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction (reportedly up to $8 Million, see link below), it behooves us to examine closely his bragging and his mendacious statements about his successes. With fraternity boyish looks, he dashes around the state and announces himself as the man who will save our public schools. He uses paid actors in his TV ads who present themselves as real parents and students, in his rush to misinform voters about his work history and his views.
In reality, Tuck is all about charter schools, as an owner, and as shown in his resume, with his few years of senior business administration at Green Dot, and then his few years with PLAS (Partnership with Los Angeles Schools). If one is judged by the company they keep, he is to be avoided by any thinking person, particularly voters.
At Green Dot, he connected with the infamous parent trigger instigator who is funded by the Walton Family Foundation and Eli Broad, the notorious Ben Austin of Parent Revolution, who continues to try to invade inner city public schools to convert them to charters to please and enrich his Walton/Broad bosses who have paid him multi millions in donations. The more charters that California taxpayers support, the greater cash rewards the charter operators take to the bank. At parent trigger venue, Desert Trails School in Adelanto, the CEO (aka Principal) salary is $200,000 while the teachers earn only $36,000, and the turnover of teachers since this triggered charter imposition has been a serious detriment to students.
California now has the most charters in the nation, close to 2,000, and LAUSD district has the most of any city, close to 300. However, despite Tuck’s claims that his Green Dot charters all were wildly successful, this is not the case. An example is Inglewood Amino which Tuck claims had few dropouts, but the stats show a dropout rate of 65%. Also, he brags all students were college ready, when in fact only 2% achieved readiness for higher ed.
Tuck also eliminated ethnic studies curriculum which further angered parents of the many different cultures that make up LAUSD. During his PLAS episode, he angered Latino parents to the degree that they called for MALDEF legal help in pressing a law suit against him and the organization for eliminating dual language learning. The cause of action included racial prejudice. Most sources cited in the links below indicate Tuck’s preference for white students from higher income families. His Charters do not reflect a preponderance of inner city children, but, parents charge that they appear to be carefully and selectively segregated.
His high tech Model N plan failed to produce adequate software so that it could not be implemented. This costly Tuck error was paid for by the public. He claims that he had Parent Engagement, Effective Teachers, Curriculum, and Technology all covered, but the facts show otherwise, and his public rhetoric seems filled with empty education hyperbole. He has virtually no background in high tech nor in education. Rather, his academic resume shows he university studies were in business, and he was a Wall Street trained investor/broker at Salomon Brothers before he decided to turn to Charter School entrepreneurship.
Tucks donors include (see link below), Broad, the Waltons, Mrs Steve Jobs, and others who all want universal American public education to be privatized for free market profit. His close allies include the unscrupulous Michelle Rhee and her basket ball player husband who is now mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, who are owners of a chain of charter schools, and are mentored and supported by Eli Broad and David Welch, and the Waltons. Donor David Welch who pressed the Vergara case to both do away with teacher tenure, and to break the backs of the teachers unions has also helped to institute similar cases in NYC and other cities around the nation in the billionaires push to privatize America’s public schools for free market investment. Tuck’s supporters also include the Charter School Association. The vast amounts of Wall Street cash donated to the campaign has resulted in endless phony commercials every few minutes on every TV station.
Tuck left Green Dot with a cloud over his head, and when he left PLAS, this jobless Wall Street plutocrat with a questionable past decided to run for State Superintendent. Although he fell double digit points behind the incumbent Tom Torlakson (who spent his career as an educator in public schools before he ran for elective office) in the primary, he was a close enough challenger that now they will again vie for the office in the November 4 election.
Too much money, too few principles!
Tuck is clearly anti people of color and ethnic studies, anti public schools, anti trained public school teachers, anti teachers unions, and against any system that does not offer huge free market education profits to investors.
Beware!
It is imperative that California voters vote for Tom Torlakson, a professional teacher, and the incumbent, as California Superintendent of Public Instruction.
http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1372328&session=2013&view=received
https://www.scribd.com/doc/243731079/Smoking-Gun-Marshall-Tuck-Violated-Student-and-Parent-Civil-Rights
http://thewire.k12newsnetwork.com/2014/10/21/marshall-tuck-betrays-latino-and-african-american-parents/
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2014/10/smoking-gun-wall-street-banker-marshall.html
Ellen Lubic, Director, Joining Forces for Education
Public Policy Educator
Educational Researcher
Joiningforces4ed@aol.com
Flrst of all, I doubt very strongly that you’re a “retired educator”; the odds of that really being true about as likely as me claiming to be a “retired bored billionaire wanting to change K-12 education out of the goodness of my heart.”
Your ignorant tirade reads like a cut & paste job from a Privatization Manual; you’ve got to be kidding if you think we’re going to fall for such a crude, obtuse snow job as the one you’re trying to pull off here.
Tell your “benefactors” they’re wasting their money. They should hire a slicker, more effectively mendacious manipulator than you if they want even moderately successful results.
Are you changemakers alter ego? Of George wearing parent face?
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Wealthy supporters: Hedge fund managers, or technocrats who although very successful in the world of finance have no clue about education. And they think a spreadsheet leads to all worldly answers and profits.
From her vantage point across the continent in Washington D.C., WASHINGTON POST columnist Valerie Strauss asks the right questions regarding Tuck and his backers:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/11/04/wouldnt-spending-30-million-on-kids-be-better-than-this/
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VALERIE STRAUSS:
“But why are Silicon Valley, hedge fund and real estate billionaires supplying Tuck with millions of dollars to make up the other half of the donations? Why, especially, would the fabulously wealthy who don’t live in California — including former Enron trader John Arnold, who lives in California, and Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, who lives in Arkansas, and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg — donate to Tuck? What is their agenda?
“I asked both campaigns, and here’s what Tuck’s campaign manager, Cynara Lilly, said:
” ‘One out of eight kids in public schools in America attends California public schools. There’s no denying that with California’s schools ranking 45th in the nation, (therefore) what happens here can have a huge effect on how prepared the next generation is to compete in an increasingly global economy. What’s good for kids anywhere, is good for all of us, everywhere.’
“(Her comment doesn’t note that California’s school rankings has been dropping like a stone as K-12 funding in the state has been plummeting. In Education Week’s 2013 Quality Counts survey, the state was 49th in per-pupil spending. But never mind.)
“Torlakson spokesman Paul Hefner said:
” ‘As for those supporting Tom’s opponent, they’ve made their education agenda very clear – supporting school privatization, ending pensions for public employees and treating schools like a business.’
“Tuck has won the endorsements of many newspapers in the state, including the Los Angeles Times whose editorial actually accused the teachers unions of being a ‘big-money special interest’ when they donate to a particular candidate, but made a point of saying that billionaire businessmen and women are not when they pour money into a campaign. Actors Kristen Bell, Dax Shepherd and Nathan McHale made what they consider an amusing video supporting him.
“Torlakson, on the other hand, has been endorsed by more than 100 education leaders statewide, including almost every county superintendent.
“What makes all of this in some ways unfathomable is that the California state school superintendent’s job has very little power. California’s Education Department doesn’t actually run the state’s public schools and has little involvement in policymaking. The governor-appointed state Board of Education does.
“Wouldn’t spending $30 million on kids be better than this?”