Associated Administrators of Los Angeles on teacher Torlakson v. banker Tuck

Don't let the wealthy buy this election! — Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA)

From the November 3, 2014 issue of Update

Tom Torlakson, California's Superintendent of Public Instruction and AALA-supported candidate, needs your help to once again thwart the moneyed elite who unsuccessfully tried to defeat Monica Ratliff, Steve Zimmer, Bennett Kayser and Dr. George McKenna in LAUSD's recent Board of Education elections. Did you know that fewer than 25 ultra-wealthy individuals/entities are donating millions of dollars to Torlakson's opponent to buy California's top public education post in the November 4, 2014, California election?

You are the education "expert" and people respect school leaders. They want to know your opinion regarding who they should cast their vote for in the race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. They also want to know more about why you strongly support Tom Torlakson and not Marshall Tuck.

The stakes for public education this Election Day, November 4, 2014, are high. Here are some key points to share with your friends, colleagues, family members and casual acquaintances.

Facts about Marshall Tuck, Torlakson's opponent:

• Tuck claims firsthand experience of running "two school systems." He worked with one school for Green Dot that expanded to 10 schools, and then with 17 Partnership for LA Schools. Becoming Superintendent of Public Instruction in California means you oversee close to 10,000 schools.
• In his interview with the AALA PAC Steering Committee, Tuck hesitated in his support for employer-paid health benefits.
• Tuck promotes privatizing public schools with public funds. He served as Green Dot's Chief Operating Officer and CEO of former Mayor Villaraigosa's Partnership for LA Schools, both deemed failures by Diane Ravitch. He claims that during his tenure, the Mayor's Partnership for LA Schools had high student achievement which is contradicted by the data.
• Tuck is highly supportive of the Vergara Decision which dismantles seniority and tenure. He blames unions for the dismal conditions in schools, rather than placing the blame on inadequate funding. He told the AALA PAC Steering Committee that his first action, if elected, will be to pull out of the Vergara appeal.

Facts about Tom Torlakson:

• Torlakson knows how government can work to help students and communities. His service at all levels of government from city council member, county supervisor, assemblyman, senator and now our State Superintendent of Public Instruction gives him the insight and experience to support all students in our public schools.
• He campaigned up and down California in support of Proposition 30 to increase funding for public education. Without this funding we would still be in an economic recession and laying off thousands of employees.
• Torlakson is a teacher and coach and knows our urban schools well.
• Torlakson has provided $3 billion to reduce class size and counselor ratios by authoring the Quality Education Investment Act that provides monies to the state's most challenged schools.
• Torlakson authored Proposition 1A that generated $9 billion for school construction which will be matched by more money locally from voters to repair our schools and relieve overcrowded campuses.
• Torlakson championed money for Kindergarten Readiness.
• Torlakson gained state money to supplement federal meals money for poor students.
• Torlakson took action and set standards for Physical Education in schools.

See also: Los Angeles Administrators endorse educator Tom Torlakson, expose list of banker Marshall Tuck's funders

Associated Administrators of Los Angeles on teacher Torlakson v. banker Tuck

Los Angeles Administrators endorse educator Tom Torlakson, expose list of banker Marshall Tuck's funders

"Torlakson stresses, “Sometimes I’ll agree with the union and sometimes I won’t, but I’ll always agree with the kids and always agree with teachers on the front line.” And he takes every opportunity to emphasize that he has had actual classroom experiences that Tuck cannot claim and has always been a staunch supporter of administrators." — Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA)

From the October 27, 2014 issue of Update

Tom Torlakson, AALA-endorsed candidate for California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, will fight to increase education funding, fight to restore funding for science, social studies, art, music, drama and sports and fight to reduce class size. Many of you can vote now, and are urged to do so. Don’t wait until Election Day, Tuesday, November 4, 2014.

• Support Tom Torlakson by taking these actions now!
• Vote now, if you received an absentee ballot.

Contact five (5) friends/colleagues and urge them to vote for teacher educator, Torlakson.

Be aware that antiunion and antipension Enron billionaire John Arnold has given $300K to support Torlakson’s opponent, Marshall Tuck. Another $500K has come from Carrie Walton Penner, whose family makes its fortune running antiunion, low-wage-paying Walmart. Let’s stop the one percent ultra wealthy oligarchs from controlling public education!

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From the October 20, 2014 issue of Update

On Thursday, October 10, 2014, AALA PAC Steering Committee recommended, and AALA Representative Assembly voted unanimously to endorse Tom Torlakson for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. The two candidates, incumbent Tom Torlakson and his opponent, Marshall Tuck, were both interviewed by the PAC Steering Committee. The PAC Council vote authorizes AALA to endorse and financially support its selection. Torlakson and Tuck have very different views on the condition of K-12 education in California, as explained in last week’s Update (October 13, 2014).

Slick ads and catchy messages can’t mask the fact that Marshall Tuck has received $300K from John Arnold of Enron whose mission is to end public pensions around the country. Additionally, Tuck’s campaign has received over one million dollars from local Republican Bill Bloomfield who had confronted and run against Henry Waxman who has never shied away from taking on the powerful and wealthy in the interest of democracy. Other donors to Tuck’s campaign include billionaires Eli Broad, Carrie Walton Penner and Laurene Powell Jobs.

This election on November 4, 2014, is extremely important to public education in California. AALA urges our members and colleagues to support Tom Torlakson.

Los Angeles Administrators endorse educator Tom Torlakson, expose list of banker Marshall Tuck's funders

Tom Torlakson Supports Ethnic Studies! Marshall Tuck? Well, he does that Arizona thing…

When will the age of open bigots like Marshall Tuck holding education positions end?

.@TomTorlakson supports #EthnicStudies! @MarshallTuck? Well, he does that Arizona thing… http://t.co/4PT5uQKJqI pic.twitter.com/uLDLy8sJMk

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) October 22, 2014

Tom Torlakson Supports Ethnic Studies! Marshall Tuck? Well, he does that Arizona thing…

Schools Matter: When will the age of open bigots like Marshall Tuck holding education positions end?

First published on Schools Matter on October 16, 2014

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"You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens?
Those brown kids change the world." — Sherman Alexie

California might be poised to take Arizona's crown for having an unabashed white supremacist in the position of State Superintendent of Public Instruction (SSPI). Arizona, which had back-to-back SSPI bigots in Tom Horne and John Huppenthal, apparently served as a longtime model for California based business-banker-cum-school-CEO Marshall Tuck. Horne and Huppenthal both lost their respective offices this year, but not before doing unconscionable damage to both Arizona schools, and the psyches of countless children of color.

The parallels between Eli Broad trained Tuck and the recently deposed Arizona reactionaries are striking. Take Huppenthal's stance on languages other than English:

"We all need to stomp out balkanization. No spanish radio stations, no spanish billboards, no spanish tv stations, no spanish newspapers. This is America, speak English."

Students Protesting Marshall Tuck's racist decision to kill Ethnic Studies. Photo by Robert D. Skeels.

Compare Huppenthal's hate speech to one of Tuck's many hostile acts against Spanish speakers when he was "CEO" of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS).

In the following year, we witnessed Spanish language signage on the campus disappear. Bilingual restrooms, parent center, nurses office signs were all replaced with English-only signs.

Marshall Tuck was equally responsible for removing the renowned Academic English Mastery Program (AEMP) at Ritter, a program with a nation-wide reputation for addressing the needs of Standard English Learners.

Tuck was able to accomplish in praxis the very things that Huppenthal was so keen to express in theory. In addition to these colonizers' battles against languages other than English, Tuck and his Arizona counterparts waged open war on any curricula that didn't celebrate "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy". In Arizona it was manifested as this:

Tom Horne and John Huppenthal's racist HB 2281, which, among other things, banned Ethnic Studies in Arizona schools.

In Los Angeles, it looks like this:

The initial decision was surreptitiously announced by one of Villaraigosa's education henchman, ex-Green Dot Schools Corporation flunky Marshall Tuck. Tuck has been PLAS' CEO since the privately managed organization began. Eliminating the only Ethnic Studies program at Santee High School is tantamount to cultural sterilization.

There are certain wealthy white actors that admire how Tuck eliminated Ethnic Studies Programs. Given the growing local community movements for Ethnic Studies as a K-12 graduation requirement, Dax Shepard and Tuck's troglodyte views against these important programs are fortunately in the waning minority.

Ultimately we must remember that the Tucks, Huppenthals, and Hornes of this neoliberal era are chosen by those ruling the corporate state for a reason, and that is that they reflect the ideology of those rulers. Dr. Rodolfo Acuña writes of one such racist (Michael Hicks), who can stand in for anyone mentioned in this essay:

"He mirrors those in power who have media consultants that filter their words. They are the biggest threat to traditions of free speech that made this country different."

The names behind neoliberal corporate education reform, specifically the Broad/Gates/Walton triumvirate, are the root cause of the disease. Tuck is just a symptom. We can only hope that Californian voters see through the fortunes and lies backing him, and send him on the same path as his fellow racists Horne and Huppenthal.

Schools Matter: When will the age of open bigots like Marshall Tuck holding education positions end?

@ THE CHALK FACE: Banker Marshall Tuck put student lives at risk by terminating Health Education

First published on @ THE CHALK FACE on October 15, 2014

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"To reduce sexual risk behaviors and related health problems among youth, schools and other youth-serving organizations can help young people adopt lifelong attitudes and behaviors that support their health and well-being—including behaviors that reduce their risk for HIV, other STDs, and unintended pregnancy." — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Eli Broad-trained neoliberal operative Marshall Tuck is running for California's Superintendent of Public Instruction seat. The former Wall Street banker Tuck has never taught a day in his life, and has no background in pedagogy or child development, but he is financed by the corporate education plutocracy. Despite being the most profoundly unqualified candidate for the office, this backing by reactionary billionaires has made for the possibility of him being elected. The doting corporate media has recklessly ignored the dismal performance of the schools he managed, the astonishing remediation rates of students he claimed were "college ready," his racist shuttering of Ethnic Studies programs, and his closure of Heritage/Dual Language Programs. All in all, Tuck's record has been one of failure and bigotry.

Around this time of year in 2012, when I was running for school board at Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), a community AIDS group reached out to me and explained an urgent situation with health classes. According to them, The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS) administration, namely Marshall Tuck, wanted to use the funds for health classes on some software project to improve math scores. I can't say for sure if that last part is accurate, but according to a Tuck quote (reproduced below) in the Los Angeles Times, there is some credence to the statement. Regardless of the exact reason, we know for fact that Tuck eliminated all health education classes from PLAS when he was their "CEO." That callous act by Tuck is not in dispute.

It's really unsurprising that business banker Marshall Tuck would deem wringing a few more Average Yearly Progress (AYP) points out of students more important than their very lives. However, I had forgotten about this whole narrative until recently when I happened upon a "California: #2 in Syphilis Cases" sign on a bus bench by my law school. It reminded my of Tuck's vacuous ‪#‎CAbytheNumbers Twitter ‬campaign where he rails against the state of California schools (not mentioning his were among the absolute worst of course). The Tuck campaign tweets banalities like: "#1 in wine production, #45 in education. CA is a great state. It's time we had great schools." Suddenly I remembered that he had shuttered all health education at PLAS, and I knew I needed to tie the concepts together. The above meme image is the result of that epiphany.

From the May 20, 2012 Los Angeles Times:

Schools also are supposed to teach such topics as nutrition, safety, mental health awareness and about drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse. But generally there's no penalty for skipping these topics, and experts believe many have long done so.

PLAS was one of a number of Los Angeles schools (mostly also privately managed charters) that dropped health classes altogether. John Deasy wanted to follow suit, but the elected LAUSD school board prevented him from doing so. PLAS has an unelected board, and hence no one to protect students and community from unilateral decisions by corporate executives like Tuck. When the Times questioned Tuck on his imprudent decision, he responded:

"Less than 10% of our kids are at grade level in math," said Marshall Tuck, head of the mayor's Partnership for Los Angeles Schools. "If you don't get them caught up early, they're going to fall further behind. All of us are forced to make really difficult decisions." [emphasis mine]

Difficult decisions indeed. Note that his vapid statement includes the focus on math scores, just like the organization that contacted me about the PLAS situation said. Bear in mind that PLAS gets millions in extra funding from right-wing billionaires like Richard Riorden, Eli Broad, et al. They could easily budget both health and math, but corporate priorities like Common Core State Standards have made it clear that students aren't the focus, only their scores are. Oddly, Tuck's priorities didn't seem to help. For example, both math and English scores declined at Tuck run Figueroa Elementary School from 2012 to 2013, after health had been jettisoned for math.

Of course, anyone actually involved in the teaching of students knows that health is a far reaching topic, something lost on investment banker Tuck and his supporters:

"Health is probably one of the only classes in the entire curriculum that is about kids," said longtime Birmingham High health teacher Wayne Sink, who's retired but still volunteers at the school. "It is all about their lives and what is going on about diet, nutrition, puberty, sexuality, dating — all those things they were going through. It's vital."

Health classes are vital. I want to conclude using the prose I wrote for the meme itself, I think it sums Marshall Tuck up quite neatly.

At a time with Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) running rampant, business banker MARSHALL TUCK SHUT DOWN ALL HEALTH EDUCATION CLASSES at the schools he managed, putting students' health at serious risk. Tuck says he has a "kids first agenda," but his actions proved otherwise. When bankers run schools, students' lives take a back seat to corporate profits. Stop banker Marshall Tuck's agenda! Vote for the teacher instead.

@ THE CHALK FACE: Banker Marshall Tuck put student lives at risk by terminating Health Education

Professional educator Lydia Gutierrez versus profit minded businessman Marshall Tuck

I'm currently not endorsing anyone in the race for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, but there is one individual whose life-long mission to destroy public education must be stopped. That individual is reactionary businessman Marshall Tuck.

Tom Torlakson would have easily won my endorsement had it not been for his support of the abject Pearson plc, News Corp, and Gates Foundation profit pit otherwise known as Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

After reading another article today on billionaire backed Marshall Tuck's vile plans to attack working class teachers and privatize public education, I decided to issue a brief statement on the third candidate in the race—Lydia Gutierrez.

I know Lydia Gutierrez personally, and while I don't subscribe to her political world-view, I do commend her on her refreshingly principled stands against both Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and school privatization.

Although Gutierrez and I differ sharply on many issues of pedagogy, we do agree that the corporate reforms embodied in Marshal Tuck exist for only one reason—to enrich corporate coffers. Unlike Tuck, Gutierrez is a person of integrity.

Professional educator Lydia Gutierrez versus profit minded businessman Marshall Tuck

Re-elect Tom Torlakson: a teacher working for schools and kids

Re-elect Tom Torlakson: a teacher working for schools and kids. #LAUSD https://t.co/RqWpZDW39g pic.twitter.com/d656kjg6Zs
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) November 22, 2013

Re-elect Tom Torlakson: a teacher working for schools and kids

Marshall Tuck: despised by community, but always welcome at the Chamber of Commerce

Marshall Tuck: despised by community, but always welcome at the Chamber of Commerce. #LAUSD http://t.co/qwt2MvH4PF pic.twitter.com/q9M6FxZcK8
— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) November 14, 2013

Show right-wing business-banker Marshall Tuck and his billionaire backers that Californians want a professional educator, not a venture capitalist, as our State Superintendent of Instruction — support Tom Torlakson!

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Together, we've done a lot for our schools and our kids over the past three years.
Thanks to your support, we've stopped the harmful cuts to our schools. We've focused on higher standards and 21st century skills. We are returning music, drama, art, civics, and STEM to our classrooms. We're restoring preschool and quality early learning programs. We are working to give all students access to technology and a taste of the working world before they graduate.
As a teacher, I am proud of what we have accomplished together for California’s students:

• Graduation rates at an all-time high
• Statewide test scores near their peak
• New, higher standards in place to keep students engaged and in school today -- and prepared to start a career and college tomorrow.

Of course, there’s much more to do. But our hard work for children is paying off with better school accountability and fewer dropouts.
As optimistic as I am about the future, I also need to share with you some news about a challenge to my re-election effort. Strange as it may seem, a well-funded former Wall Street banker is running against me.
My opponent will spend millions of dollars trying to defeat me -- money they know I cannot match as a career educator. I have always relied on the power of people at election time. And in California, we have proven again and again that real people beat big money. Can you donate $19 or more today to help?
There is a new spirit of hope and optimism at California’s schools, but the threat I’m facing is real. Without your help now, all that we’ve worked so hard to achieve could fall by the wayside.
While the election is months away, your early support is critical. Can I count on you to donate $19 or more today to show my opponent -- and his wealthy backers -- that California's schools are not for sale?.
We've accomplished much together. But there's more work to do, which is why I need you to act now.
Thank you for your consideration, and for you dedication to the students of California.

Tom Torlakson

Marshall Tuck: despised by community, but always welcome at the Chamber of Commerce