Karen Wolfe, parent activist in California, reports that Marshall Tuck—candidate for state superintendent of schools— is once again the candidate of the privatizers. She learned that he recently returned a gift of $5,000 to an anti-gay crusader.
More troubling is the money he did not return.
She writes:
”Tuck’s donors include Doris Fisher (whose Gap retail company has faced numerous child labor scandals), Eli Broad (a former top investor at AIG whose non-accredited Broad Academy trains privatizing “education leaders”), Alice Walton (the anti-labor heir to the Walmart fortune), Reed Hastings (a Silicon Valley billionaire who has tried for years to take away the right of local voters to elect their own school boards.)
“Tuck’s campaign is also apparently being funded by political action committees, despite its pledge last August that it “has not accepted—and will not accept—contributions from companies or PACs.”
“On January 11, Tuck’s campaign reported receiving $23,725 and $37,430 from a group called Govern for California, chaired by George Penner, husband of Walmart heir Carrie Walton Penner, as well as $5,000 from Fieldstead & Co.”
“Fisher, Walton, Broad, and Hastings are leading financiers of the movement to privatize public schools. Ironically, while California is a blue state, its Silicon Valley billionaires have funded an aggressive and politically powerful movement to destroy public schools and replace them with charter schools.
”The primary election will be held on June 5, with the general election this November.
“Tuck’s opponent, Tony Thurmond, is a social worker, former school board member, and current member of the state assembly. He has been endorsed by Senator Kamala Harris, U.S. Congressional Representatives Barbara Lee, Eric Swalwell, and Karen Bass, and the teachers’ union.
“Tuck, on the other hand, has the same pro-privatizing platform that voters rejected when he ran for the position four years ago. It’s the same education platform of Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and John Kasich, and Vice President Mike Pence: Deregulate public education, outsource school services, make it harder for teachers to gain tenure, and expand the market of “school choice.””
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sitting duck Tuck running amok is a schmuck full of guck.
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Who else is running for this position?
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I missed this point:
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Kind of interesting, though. I read his website and he seems to know ed reform is associated almost completely with charters/vouchers.
Charter schools are way down on the list after promise after promise on public schools:
https://marshalltuck.com/issues/a-public-education-system-that-works-for-all-kids/#section9
Ed reformers are political pros. They seem to be aware that focusing exclusively on privatization is not good politics. Now, whether they focus exclusively on privatization once they GET IN is another matter, as many of us have learned 🙂
The problem for ed reformers is they don’t offer anything of value for public school families, which is an issue when so many people use public schools.
The Republicans in the Ohio legislature spend 90% of their time on charters and vouchers- that just isn’t a realistic representation of education in this state.
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ACSA, the school administrator’s group in California, interviewed both Tuck and Thurmond and has endorsed Tuck.
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Adminimals do as adminimals do which means they doodoo.
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I sense bias and stereotyping of administrators. Should they stay off this site?
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Mary,
This blog is open to diverse points of view.
Rule 1: you are a guest in my living room. You may not insult the host: me.
Rule 2: as a guest, I request that you abide by a minimal but real level of civility. I ban certain four letter words (with rare exceptions).
Rule 3: I do not have a high level of tolerance for comments that demean teachers and other educators.
Rule 4: no peddling of conspiracy theories
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Your sensing is calibrated just fine. Yes, it is biased and stereotyping. . . on purpose! Nah, they shouldn’t stay off the site. If they can’t handle it, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me.
I stand by my neologism and from my experience it certainly isn’t a misnomer.
I’d give examples why I call administrators (and I was certified to be one, MAEd in Administration) adminimals but I really don’t want to write another book at the moment.
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By all means, administrators, being your neo-segregationist pseudoscience to this site to be debunked by true historians, experts, and educators.
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I meant bring, not being. Autocorrect again.
Also, not all admin are swayed by the hype of billionaires. But in my experience, most are.
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I think rule 4 is against the conspiracy theories that helped elect The Donald.
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Thank you, Inservice! Exactly right. I delete comments from people who peddle conspiracy theories that are manifestly untrue, eg, the Sandy Hook massacre of children and educators was an elaborate hoax, acted out by child actors. No one died there. This from the vile Alex Jones. There are blogs that peddle this tripe. I don’t.
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Completely off topic, sorry, but I love this song.
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In Los Angeles nowadays, billionaires buy school board elections. Purchased school board members select administrators. Administrators blame and harass teachers. The latest is a mandatory CRRP training session in which teachers must accept the label of being racist, sexist, and homophobic — all of us — and accept blame for all of society’s inequalities. Marshall Tuck has a long history of blaming and shaming public education to promote privatization and segregation, and the mere mention of his name makes my skin crawl. He, if elected, will unilaterally implement Common Core, test score-based VAM evaluation, TFA, and charter scams. California public education will not survive.
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See this:
Q Overall, on the 2015 National Assessment for Educational Progress eighth-grade reading exam, 72 percent of California eighth-graders failed to achieve proficiency. Sadly, 84 percent of African-American and 82 percent of Latino eighth graders failed to hit proficiency. END Q
You are concerned that California public education will not survive. Maybe it needs to be put out of its misery.
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NAEP is designed so that about 35% reach proficiency
Proficiency is not grade level
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I would like to learn more about NAEP. I have done statistical analysis for the US Dept of Commerce. Sometimes, the way that you present statistics can have more sway than the actual numbers. Like selling 95% fat-free milk.
Clearly, the California public educational system is not delivering the necessary educational services to California children, especially children of color.
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Go online to the NAEP website.
The achievement levels were created in 1992. They are guesswork. They are determined by convening panels to guess what fourth or eighth graders should know. The trends tell us something, but the specific numbers don’t. They say nothing about causation. On all tests, the wealthiest kids get the highest scores. The poorest get the lowest. Very few students reach advanced, 8-10%. Typically, about 35% reach proficient. The only state where 50% ever reached proficient is Massachusetts. Check it out.
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If public education were “put out of its misery,” we would be like Chile under Pinochet. You know how that goes, no?
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Mary, I’m a parent, not a teacher. I attended the Region 16 (Los Angeles) ACSA meeting last week, which was called to explain the endorsement after an uproar by members over ACSA’s endorsement of Marshall Tuck. The meeting was led by ACSA’s government relations person, Edgar Zazueta, who worked in LAUSD’s government relations department when John Deasy was Superintendent. I’m not a lawyer, but the criticisms he threw out of Tony Thurmond sounded slanderous to me. I have a call in to Thurmond’s campaign to ask if some of the statements Zazueta made are factually accurate. The general concensus by members hearing Zazueta was that “The fix was in.” Members were furious that Tuck, who has promised to rip up the ed code, was endorsed in a secret process that members were only told about after the fact. Many Los Angeles educators have first hand experience with Tuck who led both Green Dot charter schools and The Partnership, the group of schools that former LA Mayor Villaraigosa got control of when the courts smacked down his attempt at Mayoral control of LAUSD. They wanted to know how in the world ACSA could endorse without asking its members. Not one ACSA member at that meeting voiced agreement with the endorsement of Tuck.
It’s also worth noting that in Los Angeles, we have our own Administrators group, Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which was formed because ACSA represents superintendents more than schoool administrators. AALA has not endorsed yet. http://Www.AALA.us
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Thank you for this information, Karen. I had no idea any ACSA members were upset. Green Dot charter schools were a failure, and the last time Tuck ran, he wasn’t promoting public schools like he says he is now. I couldn’t get through to talk to Tuck personally, but Andrew Blumenfeld, his assistant, will talk to you by phone.
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Why would anyone with a rational mind that thinks critically want to talk to Tuck or anyone in his campaign and expect to be told anything that’s even close to the truth?
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Gee, Lloyd, I always teach my students to listen to both sides and to ask questions, so I try to be a role model in that area.
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Does that include teaching them how to determine what the real fake news is? These days, asking questions isn’t enough, because the people being asked those questions are often dedicated serial liars like the current president of the United States.
The odds are if you ask Trump or anyone that works for him a question, the answer will be a lie that only a dedicated fact checker with an open mind can prove is wrong.
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I do not teach my students to always listen to both sides. I teach them to stand up for their beliefs, and that some issues have right and wrong sides. The struggle for Civil Rights is one of those issues, for example.
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People in Illinois are now going to find out they were bamboozled on that voucher scheme:
“The program, which opponents liken to a backdoor school voucher plan because it diverts tax dollars to private schools, was never debated in the General Assembly. It was tucked into the historic overhaul of Illinois’ public school funding formula passed last year. Cardinal Blase Cupich lobbied for its passage. More than half of the state’s private schools are Catholic.
Families apply for the private school scholarships — worth up to roughly $13,000 — through state-authorized “scholarship granting organizations.” There are nine of these charities this inaugural year, including Empower Illinois.”
Under the new program, charities like Empower Illinois can keep 5 percent of all contributions for salaries and overhead. Turbocharged by the Catholic Church’s large donor base, Empower Illinois is in line to net an estimated $1.67 million, and that’s just based on donations to date.
The group, which previously had just three employees, now has a layer of top management, including two partners, a managing partner and executive director Mendoza, plus five paid consultants. The consultants include Juan Rangel, who was fired from his job at the helm of UNO Charter School Network in 2013, after the Chicago Sun-Times revealed top UNO execs had steered contracts to relatives. Mendoza said he hired Rangel to do outreach because “in the country, there’s no one with a better ability and skill set to organize than Juan.”
90% of kids in Illinois attend public schools. Not one of their elected representatives in the statehouse considered them AT ALL when they jammed thru this voucher scheme.
How did this happen? How did we get so many politicians who simply DO NOT work for public school families?
The whole legislature should be fired and replaced with people who support PUBLIC education.
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Thank you Karen Wolfe for her last sentence of her post.
Yes, all voters should use her guideline to STAY AWAY from all BAD CANDIDATES who run for all elective office positions in PUBLIC EDUCATION.
Here is Karen Wolfe’s best guideline in order to identify candidates who work for private, corporate for robbing public tax money:
1) Deregulate public education,
2) Outsource school services,
3) Make it harder for teachers to gain tenure, and
4) Expand the market of “school choice”,
5) In my humble opinion, please observe candidate’s lifestyle and commitment through their working experience and their family members’ past and current learning in public education. Back2basic
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Tony’s online site is https://www.tonythurmond.com. He outlines his positions, and provides a donation link. Please consider making a donation to his campaign.
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