In 1990, in partnership with the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh, the NCEE's Tucker, co-founded the New Standards Project. They collaborated with "states, urban school districts, and private foundations" and involved "20,000 teachers in all aspects of the development process". The New Standards Project sought to "develop an alternative to traditional assessment instruments and techniques by designing new, complex performance tasks that more closely resemble tasks encountered outside of school, thereby providing a rich context in which students could demonstrate their knowledge and skills."