Schools Matter: Marshall Tuck's Legacy of Bigotry and Failure

Schools Matter: Marshall Tuck's Legacy of Bigotry and Failure:

Marshall Tuck's Legacy of Bigotry and Failure

First submitted May 21, 2014 to LA Progressive

Portions of this article were contributed by Cheryl Ortega and Dr. John Fernandez.

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"Tuck will most likely have a huge pot of money in his war chest coming from the likes billionaire boys clubbers like Broad, DFER and other corporate reformers." — Professor Mike Klonsky

Los Angeles Parents and Community Protesting Marshall Tuck. Photo by Ron Gochez.

Many of us hoped that when right-wing business banker Marshall Tuck was ignominiously forced to step down as the "CEO" of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS), that we might have heard the last of Tuck altogether. Tragically, the Eli Broad trained neoliberal operative was preparing for a run for California's Superintendent of Public Instruction seat. Despite never having taught a day in his life, nor having any background in pedagogy or child development, Tuck entered the race knowing that he could count on mountains of cash from the corporate education plutocracyaiming to — in words of Tuck's fellow arch-reactionary Grover Norquist — "drown [public education] in the bathtub".

The social justice case against Tuck is strong. His racist decision to eliminate Ethnic Studiesat Santee High School alone is enough to condemn and convict him from a progressive standpoint. Tuck's bigoted ethnocentrism was also on full display when he shuttered all the heritage language academic programs, and most of the dual language immersion programs in PLAS. His seemingly maniacal hatred of working class people and their labor organizations finds its highest expression in his unabashed support for the Vergara lawsuit, funded by reactionary Silicon Valley millionaire David F. Welch, which is intended to strip teachers of all their hard won rights as workers.

Before looking at these more shameful aspects of Tuck's history, it would do well to give a brief background on the corporate favorite. Moreover, it is important to address the prodigious lies he has been telling in order to garner support of voters who don't have the factual wherewithal to vet his statements. The Tuck campaign has been making mendacious claims of school turn arounds, extraordinary test score gains, college readiness for all their graduates, and flat out superior achievement to public schools. Ordinarily one would think that the mainstream media would scrutinize these statements for veracity. However, in this age where the media is owned by same corporations that drive the neoliberal corporate Schools Matter: Marshall Tuck's Legacy of Bigotry and Failure: