Marc Tucker is the founder, CEO, and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. A leader of the standards-driven education reform movement, Tucker has been studying the strategies used by the countries with the most successful education systems for three decades. He created New Standards--a precursor to the Common Core, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, and its successor, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce; and he was instrumental in creating the National Skill Standards Board. Tucker also created the National Institute of School Leadership.

Tucker authored the 1986 Carnegie report A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century and the report of the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages, and was the lead author of Tough Choices or Tough Times, the report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. He coauthored or edited Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth of Nations; Standards for Our Schools: How to Set Them, Measure Them, and Reach Them; and The Principal Challenge.

Tucker was commended by President Bill Clinton for his contributions to the design of the Clinton administration's education and job training proposals in the Rose Garden ceremony celebrating the passage of the legislation authorizing the Clinton program. In 2014, he received the James Bryant Conant Award from the Education Commission of the States for his outstanding individual contribution to American education.