MARC TUCKER, CULPRIT IN DESIGN OF OBE:

Below is a copy of a 1994 interview that Marc Tucker gave in the Oregonian.

[I include it here for it shows the slanted, fuzzy thinking of those who orchestrated this junk.  They wanted to have the two "certificates" because it was a way to track students and dumb down more than half of them while also allowing smarter students to excel.  There is/was nothing fair or democratic about this plan, but it is interesting that these New Yorkers decided to try the plan out on a backwoods state like Oregon!  Oregon is the home of the hippies who lived in the woods in communes in the 1970's.  Now their grandchildren, who have been brainwashed, are now in school and doing poorly. Only the Asians, for the most part can master "Physics, German and calculus."  THEY will be the ones getting the top rated certificate.  Everyone else will be shunted into a vocational track. That was the underlying plan. Marc Tucker thought they were dumb enough to buy it all. Fortunately the public finally wised up, and the certificates were dumped.  Unfortunately the ideas persisted. MM]

DEEP CHANGES URGED FOR SCHOOL REFORM

A Man Who Helped Craft Oregon Law Sees a Clash Between Time, Standards

by Bill Graves

A national education leader who helped craft Oregon's school reform law says the plan will not work without deeper changes.

The law sets high standards for students, but it fails to account for the fact that some students will need more time than others to meet those standards, says Marc. S. Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy in Rochester, N. Y.

"You can fix time or standards, but you can't fix both," Tucker said during a visit to Portland last week to address a conference on preparing students for work.

State education official, however, say Oregon schools have more options for flexibility than Tucker realizes.

Here's what Tucker is worried about.

Traditionally, high schools have allowed academic standards to vary for students while requiring them to all spend the same amount of time in school.  While one student takes physics, calculus and German, for example, another takes general science, basic math and weight lifting, both spend the same amount of time in school, but the former meets far higher academic requirements than the latter.

Oregon's school reform law shifts to a system that will require all students to meet high academic standards to graduate.  All, for example, must learn a second language.  They must meet one set of standards at about the end of the 10th grade for a certificate of initial mastery and a second set two years later for a certificate of advanced mastery.

What troubles Tucker is that Oregon's law implies that all students will be able to meet these standards at about the same time.  It won't happen, he says.

Now that the state is setting fixed academic standards for all students, he says, it must give some students more time than others to meet them.

Some students for example, may need to take extra classes after school, on Saturdays or during summers to master the first set of standards by the end of their sophomore year.

Norma Paulus, the state superintendent of public instruction says Oregon schools will have the freedom to vary school time for students by getting waivers from state laws.

'We have never assumed that children would learn at the same rate," she said.  "You have to set these high standards and high expectations,, but also be practical, realizing that all kids are not going to meet them at the same time."

Indirectly, Tucker is a chief architect of Oregon's school reform law.  He organized the commission that produced a 1990 report called "American's Choice:  High Skills or Low Wages."  which he also had a hand in writing.

Portland Mayor Vera Katz, a former state representative who drafted and pushed Oregon's school reform law through the Legislature served on Tucker's board of directors.  So did Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Katz patterned much of her law after "American's Choice."  Other states including Washington, have done the same.

"I'm enormously impressed with the tenacity Oregon is pushing this plan."  Tucker says.

"When I look forward, I think it is too easy to see all of the things leading to stalemate and disappointment.  But when I look back at the last five years, it is amazing how far we have come.