I’m surely sprouting new gray hairs at 80 miles per hour.
If there was doubt about whether something was truly rotten in the state of education governance here in sweet, naiive Utah, this news should end that doubt: of all the possible gurus, this is who our legislators, USOE and state school board have invited as the out-of-town centerpiece for a joint education conference taking place this Wednesday and Thursday.
You may recall that he’s on the Top Ten List of Scariest People in Education Reform.
He’s the espouser of no more Algebra II in our high schools, the dismisser of classic literature as not so relevant, a disciple of federal power, a conspirator with Hillary Clinton for cradle-to-grave student-citizen micromanagement, and the top crusader against what he calls “the beloved American emblem: local control” –he’s the one.
The conference is for Utah’s State Board of Education, State Office of Education, and legislators, but it’s open to the public and will be streamed.
If you can attend, it’s on September 2 and 3, at Gilbert Great Hall, R. Haze Hunter Conference Center, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah.
If you don’t know who Marc Tucker is, learn a little bit more.
Marc Tucker is– unbelievable as it may seem– an open advocate for the complete deletion of local control. You read it right. This is a direct quote from Tucker:
The United States will have to largely abandon the beloved emblem of American education: local control. If the goal is to greatly increase the capacity and authority of the state education agencies, much of the new authority will have to come at the expense of local control.
Marc Tucker also despises what is –or was– real education, in favor of the robotic efficiency of cradle-to-grave federal micromanagement of systems. He wrote the unbelievable NCEE report that advocates for the removal of Algebra II –and any math beyond it from high schools, that also labeled classic literature and student personal writing “less relevant” and dismissable. If this sounds like impossible, deliberate dumbing down, you have not read Tucker’s reasoning, which envisions a socialist’s factory view of school: a place to create economy-centered worker bees, to generate a collective; not a place to “waste” resources for soaring and free thinkers. He’s all about efficiency at the expense of individual freedom.
Marc Tucker’s BFF relationship with the creepiest lady in D.C., Hillary Clinton, is notable. It is a decades-long collaboration that, back in the 90s, envisioned US education with all federal control rather than any local control. That collaboration was recorded in the Congressional public record. Tucker and Clinton outlined the entire Common Core/Common Data movement, but used different terminology. Read that in full sometime.
Marc Tucker’s shameful, anti-freedom philosophies have been repeatedly, successfully put to pasture by great thinkers and scholars– for example, very clearly, by Dr. Yong Zhao. Dr. Zhao should have been invited to advise Utah this week, not Tucker!
If you want to know more, I’ve written many articles about Marc Tucker. He’s bad news. Read my archive on Tucker at this link.
I really can’t believe he’s coming.
What are your thoughts? Is this okay?
–If he were invited to the university for a two-sided debate, fine!
–If his visit was a University lecture, some attempt by the dean to expose students to radical ideas from extreme ends of a spectrum, fine!
But this is not a university lecture.
It’s a joint legislative – school board – USOE meeting, which just happens to be taking place at SUU. It could have been at any venue.
No one is slated to debate him.
Marc “end-local-control” Tucker is the only out of town speaker coming to this conference to address the Utah legislature and the Utah State Office and School Board. He was hand selected for the at-taxpayer-expense conference –as someone to look to for advice.
That decision says more about the state of education politics in Utah than anything more I could write tonight.
COMMON CORE 