Who
Is Marc Tucker?
Since the advent of
education reform, the name of Marc Tucker has come up repeatedly early on. A relative unknown player to that point,
many asked "Who is Marc Tucker"?
The following is from a piece that appeared in the Democrat and
Chronicle, Rochester, New York, March 14, 1993…
He has no degree in education or business management. His background is actually closer to
that of Smith, his radio interviewer.
Before launching his career in school reform, Tucker worked as a
lighting designer and cameraman for a Boston public television station.
In 1986, Tucker was working at the
Carnegie Corp. in Washington. He'd
just finished writing A Nation Prepared — a response to the 1983
report A Nation at Risk, in which the Reagan administration warned that
America's public school students were falling behind their counterparts in
other developed countries.
Think this nobody from nowhere, with no
education and no background, writing A Nation Prepared was a
coincidence?
Bio on Tucker:
Age: 53 (in
1993)
Born: Newton, Mass, a Boston
suburb
Jobs: Lighting director, cameraman and researcher
for the president of PBS affiliate WGBH-TV in Boston,
1962-70
Assistant
executive director, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, and education
research institute in Portland, OR, 1971 [1]
Associate
director, National Institute of Education, U.S. Department of Education,
1972-81
Researcher in Washington DC, exploring the use of computers and
telecommunications in education, on a grant from the Carnegie Corporation,
1981-84
Executive director, Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy,
Washington, 1985-87
President, National Center on Education and the Economy,
1988-present. Was also professor of education at the
University of Rochester, 1988-90
Family: Married Kathy Bonk, friend of 15 years, May 1993; has two sons from a
previous marriage: Matthew, 26, and
Joshua, 24
Source: Democrat and
Chronicle, Rochester, New York, March 14, 1993
The article in the Democrat and
Chronicle continues,
Family and friends
describe Marc Tucker as a driven, introspective man.
He grew up in Newton, Mass, an upper-middle-class suburb outside
Boston that prided itself on its acclaimed public schools.
The brothers say their family wasn't as financially well-off as
most in town. Their father was an
office manager for a company that made children's furniture. Roger Tucker, who helps manage a
database for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, says their
mother was a "genius" — a woman with undergraduate and graduate
degrees from Radcliffe and Harvard whom Roger
describes as deeply introspective.
She has several stays in mental hospitals, Roger says. Marc Tucker says only that his father
felt he couldn't take care of the boys on his own, so they often were sent to
foster homes or orphanages. The
Tuckers' marriage was not a happy one, and both boys "adopted" other
families as their own, says Roger. …
Roger says one of the most influential people in his brother's
life was his sixth-grade teacher in Newton, Eugene Gray. Gray hosted a children's show much like
"Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" on Boston public-television station WGBH, where Tucker would later find his first job.
"Marc has always held him up high as what teachers should be
like," says Roger. "He
has an excitement in giving, which should be the basic notion of teaching. He was very nurturing."
Some insight into Tucker's socialistic
philosophy comes from a piece in Education Week, July 13, 1994:
Tucker says his own commitment to that concept has deeply personal
roots. He grew up in foster homes
in Newton, Mass., and attended Brown and Yale universities on full academic
scholarships.
The scholarship to Yale, however, required him to work 16 to 20
hours a week for no pay. That left
him little time to get a job to pay for room and board. He subsisted on leftover breakfast rolls
from a local coffee shop until he collapsed in the spring of his first year at
Yale. He was hospitalized for two
months while he recovered from the effects of malnutrition. He never finished his graduate courses
at Yale.
"When I hear people tell me they are upset about what I have
to say about schools and the economy, I think that's a wonderful attitude for
people who never have to worry where their next meal is coming from," he
says now.
In 1986, following the publishing of
his report, A Nation Prepared, Tucker became a consultant to
Governor Booth Gardner of Washington State. In 1987, Tucker appeared before the
House Education Committee, presumably to promote the legislation that would
establish the Schools for the 21st Century program in Washington State.
In 1991, NCEE
(of which Tucker was president) produced America's Choice: high skills or
low wages! through it's program — the
Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce (CSAW). Three individuals that sat on CSAW went on to become part of SCANS: William Brock, former Secretary of
Labor, Lauren Resnick of the New Standards Project
(also a program of NCEE), and Badi
G. Foster, President of Ætna Institute of
Corporate Education. Hillary Rodham
Clinton was paid over $100,000 to promote the report. But this wasn't the first contact
between the Clintons and Tucker.
Tucker had been hired by Governor Clinton to restructure Arkansas'
education system.
A pamphlet, put out by NCEE states,
Many of the ideas
in America's Choice are now law or on their way to becoming law. With leadership from the executive branch,
Congress has passed legislation that establishes challenging national education
goals, a national board to oversee development of voluntary skill standards for
occupations, and more quality school-to-work programs for students.
Our reports are providing the intellectual framework for many of
the policy changes. National Center
staff regularly consult with leaders from the Clinton
administration, Congress governors, and industry, labor and education
groups. And we organize coalitions
of major national organizations to build consensus on emerging education,
employment and training issues.
Since the release of America's
Choice, the Workforce Skills Program has helped develop legislation that
sets in place a voluntary National Skills Standards Board.
States such as Indiana, Kentucky,
Maine, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Vermont and Washington already
have enacted policies that incorporate many key provisions of the America's
Choice report. Some of these
states are requiring that all students earn a Certificate of Initial Mastery.
Our assistance to
the states takes multiple forms. We
help state leaders draft legislation, then develop
strategic plans for implementing new education, training and employment
systems. We help leaders in government, business and education make the case for
change. We help states monitor
their progress and when necessary, make recommendations to help them ensure
that their activities match the intent of their policies. We are now preparing a major report on
how some states are integrating their strategies for providing education,
training and employment services.
… The Workforce Skills Program,
along with Jobs for the Future, is collaborating with the National Alliance to
develop a strong school-to-work transition program that can serve as a model
for states and communities everywhere.
This effort includes work on state policy issues as well as local
implementation issues, and it is designed to create approaches that will enable
the states and local communities to develop school-to-work systems fully
integrated with their larger systems for human resource development.
… Our goal is to explore
innovative approaches for making sure that ALL children reach the standard we
have in mind for the Certificate of Initial Mastery, whether or not they are in
school.
From a brochure
published by NCEE:
The Shoreline
central administration (Washington state)
also has embraced the Alliances [2] five design tasks; in fact, the superintendent has persuaded the
school board to evaluate her performance on the design tasks, since they
represent the real work of the district.
She also is working with the Alliance to decentralize resources down to
the school site.
The district's prospects also are aided by the state, which is
pursuing a common agenda. That is
not a coincidence. The Alliance
consulted on the drafting to the state's 1993 reform law, which calls for
developing a Certificate of Mastery and lays out a design for helping students
achieve it that mirrors the Alliance design.
As proven above, Marc Tucker is no
small player in the restructuring of education in the United States. The report, The Education Reform/School-to-Work/Workforce
Training Initiative in Washington State, outlines more in-depth, the
Tucker connections to Washington State. Washington activists have tried to get
this investigated — both from that angle and from his involvement with
the Schools for the 21st Century program.
As usual, however, the concerns of citizens have been ignored.
_______________________
[1] Remember that Ron and
Mary Havelock's Change Agents Guide to Innovation in Education
was produced at Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory shortly thereafter. [Back]
[2] The Alliance
referenced here is the National Alliance for Restructuring Education — NARE — one of the nine original design teams of the
New American Schools Development Corporation formed by Bush. What this says is that NCEE was a key player in the writing of the education
reform law in Washington State — ESHB 1209,
laws of 1993. This is the statement
by NCEE that SPI Terry Bergeson was questioned about, and that she vehemently denied
to the point of calling Tucker a liar.
This was at the point in time when it was being proved, beyond doubt,
that the agenda was not grassroots, bottom up, or local in flavor. [Back]
©July 1999
Lynn M Stuter
╪