Consulting firm Engage2Learn has partnered with Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) in promoting their progressive/liberal agenda of transforming Texas Education. This new program is called Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas. Texas superintendents have been actively working in creating the new vision and now they are hiring Engage2Learn to come into their school districts to hold community “consensus” meetings. They already have their agenda and plan in place and want the community to have the impression that their input is needed. With the use of the DELPHI TECHNIQUE public input is controlled. These meeting are a waste of time and taxpayers money. Learn how to diffuse the Delphi Technique here.
Now who runs Engage2Learn. Husband and wife team Shannon & Clark Buerk. Shannon worked for Coppell ISD and worked with Keith Sockwell @ Cambridge Strategic Services. More on Mr. Sockwell HERE.
Shannon’s goal is to transform Texas Education to a progressive/liberal one with Project Based Learning (PBL). PBL implement a collaborative learning style where absolute truth and American Exceptionalism isn’t taught. Students work on computer and in collective groups.
AUSTIN, TEXAS–Every year, the education and technology communities converge in Austin for the SXSWedu conference. It is a four day series of speakers and seminars that their website calls “the platform for education’s most energetic and innovative leaders from all backgrounds of the learning landscape including teachers, administrators, university professors, business and policy leaders.”
Breitbart Texas was at this year’s conference, March 3-6 to report back on some of the technocrats and education reformers. We went into sessions where the achievement gap, equity/educational equality/equalization, social and emotional learning, accountability, big data, advocacy, policy, and STEM were among the revolving themes of the day.
Leading the pack of prominent progressives were education historian Diane Ravitch; architect of the Common Core ELA standards and College Board president David Coleman; and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. PBS, Teach for America, and CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) sent their people.
Former Superintendent of Indiana and Florida schools Tony Bennett was also on hand to address the pros and cons of the Common Core with former Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott. Other highlighted Texans included Thomas Ratliff (Vice Chairman of the State Board of Education); Representative Jimmie Don Aycock, and Senator Wendy Davis, the Democratic challenger to Republican favorite Greg Abbott, currently the Texas Attorney General. Local educrats featured were UT Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, UT Austin Ph.D. David Yeager, Austin Community College president Richard Rhodes and Austin ISD superintendent Meria Carstarphen.
SXSWedu 2014 sponsors included all the familiar names of Fed Led Ed — Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Dell, Pearson and the Pearson Foundation, the College Board, Scholastic, Amplify, inBloom, Samsung, McGraw Hill Education, Cengage Learning, connectedu, Lumina Foundation, Xerox, among others. Local sponsors included Educate Texas, a public-private initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas; University of Texas at Austin; and the Texas Tribune. TASA (Texas Association of School Administrators) and the Austin Chamber of Commerce were listed as event supporters.
SXSW, which is short for South by Southwest is a series of events held in Austin’s downtown. It kicked off with SXSWedu 2014, March 3-6, and then continues through March 16 with music, film and interactive festivals.
[1.20.14 — Darcy Bedortha (high-school English teacher with a Ph.D) has recently been a teacher in K12, Inc. Her article is an expose´on what really happens in a K12, Inc. which is a virtual school. Students “attend” this school by e-mail, interactive/online instruction, and telephone contact with the teacher — no face-to-face time between the teacher and the student — EducationWeekis a well-respected publication and vets its contributors.
This article written by Darcy Bedortha, a teacher in K12, Inc. and published in EdWeek, is a “must read” for anyone who is considering signing his children up for the Texas Virtual Academy/K12, Inc. Darcy’s article should also be a “must read” for the Texas Legislature, Governor’s office, Lt. Governor’s office, Texas Commissioner of Education, and the Texas Education Agency.
I remember when the political forces jammed through the Texas Virtual Academy, and I feel sure many of the same people named in this article were responsible for selling their false premises to Texas. – Donna Garner]
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1.6.14 – EDWEEK.ORG
“15 Months in Virtual Charter Hell: A Teacher’s Tale”
In late August, 2012, I took a job in a school that is part of the largest virtual charter school chain in the nation. While I had misgivings about the nature of the school, I thought perhaps if I were diligent, I could serve my students well. In November 2013 I decided I could no longer continue as a teacher. This is my story.
Some Background on K12 Inc.
K12 Inc., the virtual-education company, was founded in 1999 by the one-time “junk bond king” Michael Milken and the hedge fund banker Ronald Packard. The company’s original board chairman was William J. Bennett, who had been the U.S. Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan…
My Life as a Virtual Teacher
I became a teacher because I am an advocate for youth and social justice. However, this purpose was hard to fulfill working in a K12 Inc. school. With the kind of technology, systems and process management needed to keep the enrollment machine running (and the machine is priority), there is never much time to actually teach. In my former [K12, Inc.] school, each class met for 30 minutes in an interactive-blackboard setting one day each week. Fewer than 10 percent of students actually attended these “classes.” Other than that time and any one-on-one sessions a teacher and student might set up (which, in my experience, almost never happened), there is no room for direct instruction.
Given the extensive needs of the students, this set up does not serve them well. Most of my contact with students was by email, through which I answered questions about everything from login issues and technology glitches to clarifying of assignments, and even that communication was only accessed by a very small percentage of students.
In addition, because students continuously enroll, no one was on the same assignment at the same time. I taught high school English. In a given day in mid-November I would grade introductory assignments, diagnostic essays and end-of-semester projects, and everything in between, for each course (this month I had 30 separate courses). I found it to be impossible to meet the learning needs of my students in that situation.
For most of last year I was Lead Teacher at the school, which required me to attend national staff meetings each week….In my experience, the conversation was never about how our students were struggling, how we could support those who were trying to learn the English Language, how we could support those who were homeless or how we could support those with special needs. It was never about how we could support our teachers. It seemed to me like the focus was often about enrollment, about data, about numbers of students who had not taken the proper number of tests, about ranking schools and ranking teachers. And there was marketing: how to get more children enrolled, how to reach more families, how to be sure they were pre-registered for next year, how to get Facebook pages and other marketing information “pushed out” to students.
…Teachers who work for K12 Inc. are not well compensated for all their scrambling. At my former school, teachers are paid based on the number of students on their rosters. With 225 students they are still part-time (at .75 FTE), for which the pay is $31,500 a year. With 226 students they become full time employees, and will then be paid $42,000.
Some full-time teachers now carry loads of well over 300 students. Even considering other expenses (but noting that these schools have no building or transportation costs), it is clear to me that K12 is generating considerable profits from the student/teacher ratio and compensation scheme.
My first month of teaching exhausted me, and there was never a moment in 15 months to catch my breath (many of us taught summer school, with no extra compensation, per employment agreement). Teachers are responsible for setting up courses, due dates, course pathways, etc. in connection to an extensive and ever-changing digital curriculum which is fraught with technical glitches and system-level errors. Teachers are also required to be available to students during the day, late into the evening and on weekends. In addition, they must contribute to “special projects”.
Courses and students are added daily, so there is continuous juggling, all happening during the first month of school (and beyond) while students (and teachers) are trying to learn how the system works. Granted, the first months of school are difficult for any school, but teachers at my school were putting in 40, 50, and 60 hour weeks in September 2012 while being paid only for the students on their roster, which for me hovered around 100 by the end of the first month. I think my first two-week paycheck, given the 75 students on my roster in the beginning, was about $300. Students are enrolled and drop out daily throughout the year (enrollment pauses only in December and May-June) so numbers change constantly and part-time teachers are never sure of their income.
Serving Disadvantaged Students Poorly
I believe K12 Inc. targets poor communities and economically struggling regions; they are easily influenced because they are desperately seeking alternatives to devastatingly under-funded schools. These financially strapped schools are being further bled by the exodus of students who are lured by what I now see are empty promises of marketing experts at K12 Inc…
Luis Huerta of NEPC and Teachers College, Columbia University cites K12 Inc.’s explicit strategy of targeting the least-supported population of students. He states that the corporation has an established practice of going after students who are “at risk” because of their tendency to not engage in school or expect much, if anything, from their educational experience, thereby creating a greater profit margin for K12 Inc. If a student is not active in school or demanding a quality education, he or she does not take as much of a teacher’s time; fewer questions are asked, less work needs reviewing and less interaction is required. By targeting these students for enrollment, K12 Inc. is able to push a higher student to teacher ratio: fewer teachers equals less expense, more students equals more income, fewer expenses in conjunction with greater income equals greater profits. This is a core issue with for-profit education management organizations.
The majority of students at the school are the kinds of kids whose histories and current realities cause concerned adults to keep eyes open for signs of trauma, those that haunt the dreams of educators and social workers. My students were survivors – of suicide attempts, of bullying, of abuse, of neglect, of the attempted suicides of siblings or best-friends or boyfriends. Some of them battle addictions and destructive habits; some self-harm, isolate themselves, or even run away.
I was an English teacher, so my students would write. They wrote of pain and fear and of not fitting in. They were the kinds of young people who desperately needed to have the protective circle of a community watching over them. They needed one healthy person to smile at them and recognize them by name every day, to say “I’m glad you’re here!” Many of my former students do not have that.
The last thing these young people needed, I came to realize during my time with K12 Inc., was to be isolated in front of a computer screen. A week or two or three would often go by without my getting a word from a student. They didn’t answer their email, they didn’t answer their phones. Often their phones were disconnected. Their families were disconnected. My students also moved a lot. During my first year at the school I spent days on the phone trying to track students down. This year I struggled to not simply give up under the weight of it all.
In the fall of 2013, 42 percent of our high school students were deemed “economically disadvantaged.” I had a number of students who were not native English speakers. I cannot wrap my head around how to serve a student who is unable to read or comprehend the language that the virtual curriculum is written in, let alone learn the technology (when it is functioning) without sitting beside them in the same space. Many of my non-native speakers had parents who did not speak English at all. These students often struggled for a very short time, and then I never saw their work again. They dropped out, moved on.
…in early December, nearly 80 percent of our students were failing their classes. At that time there were 303 students (12 percent of the school) enrolled in special education programs – and 259 of them were failing while 17 had no grade at all. Eighty-two percent of the 9th graders were failing. This kind of failure is in no way limited to this school; it is system-wide, reigning throughout the virtual-school world, explicitly true for K12, Inc. and its national network of online schools.
According to a July 2012 report published by the NEPC…only 27.7 percent of K12, Inc. schools met the Annual Yearly Progress goals, as compared to 52 percent of brick and mortar public schools (Miron & Urschel, 2012).
Similarly, the same study calls attention to the fact that only 37.6 percent of students at full-time virtual schools graduate on time, as compared to the national average of 79.4 percent for all public high school students…
In addition, CEO Ronald Packard was named in a2012 class action complaintciting his alleged false statements regarding student performance and K12, Inc.’s “aggressive tactics” to recruit and enroll students in effort to cover up the 40-60 percent turnover rate (the parties reached a tentative $6.75 million settlement agreement in March 2013).
…For a month I had 476 students on my rosters, in 30 different classes. In my classes, my students were writing narratives, argumentative and research papers and poetry – all of which I was committed to reading. I had students who struggled to find their way through the course pages to the assignment they wish to work on, and in their frustration they often emailed for direction. I had students who were struggling to find their way through life….
Each of these situations and many others required individual attention. How does anyone offer anything close to personal attention for over three-hundred students, most of whom you never see? Practices such as excusing (eliminating) assignments were the norm at the school. K12 Inc. calls it a “proficiency model” but it amounts to an easy route to course completion. Even the students who were more or less on pace were not learning deeply; they were often merely filling out digital worksheets as quickly as they could. The most motivated of my students regularly finished more than a dozen assignments in a day. What kind of depth of learning could that offer? That kind of workload for K12 teachers created fertile ground for practices like minimizing curriculum orsending essays to India to be graded.
Last year I had a student who never showed up to class, never turned work in, skimmed by on gaming the system with a phone call every few weeks, just enough to keep from being dropped from the rosters. She called me three days after my final grades were submitted in June, desperate to find a way to graduate. I apologized, said my grades had been submitted, and offered information for the summer school we were holding. A week or so later, when I arrived for graduation an administrator pulled me aside to tell me that this student had passed “by the proficiency method” and would be graduating. Our graduation rate was so low that this was not a surprise to me, not after the year I had spent working in this system. I was learning how things worked. Similar things have happened elsewhere. In Tennessee an email was discoveredat a K12, Inc. school directing teachers to delete poor grades.
The July 2012 NEPC report concludes that virtual schools are not adequately meeting the educational needs of students.“Children who enroll in a K12 Inc. cyberschool, who receive full-time instruction in front of a computer instead of in a classroom with a live teacher and other students, are more likely to fall behind in reading and math,” the authors state “These children are also more likely to move between schools or leave school altogether – and the cyberschool is less likely to meet federal education standards.”
A book entitled “Winning Through Intimidation” discusses a very powerful tool – the establishment of your own terminology. Throw uncommon words around. People, in fear of revealing their ignorance, will rarely ask for a clear definition.
When you own the terminology, you own the conversation. When you own the conversation, you own the argument.
A few include:
21st Century Skills
Rigor
5E’s
Inquiry-Discovery
YAG
VAD
IFD, and of course
Project-Based Learning
Most are a new coat of paint on what we all observed in past classrooms: Skills that matched the times, challenging work, research papers, teachers’ lesson plans, and group work. The difference is, these new terms hide objectives of the liberal-nature … social engineering.
When experts (resourced textbooks and experienced teachers) standards (well-defined high expectations) and individual effort and merit are eliminated then it is easier to push equal outcome; a drone society.
Common Core, Project Based Learning damages Texas students
Students indoctrinated with false, biased information
By Bill Ames
A front page headline on the October 3, 2013 Wall Street Journal reads, “U. S. Rises to No. 1 Energy Producer”.
The article text includes:
“U. S. energy output has been surging in recent years, a comeback fueled by shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas that was unimaginable a decade ago. A Wall Street Journal analysis of global data shows that the U. S. is on track to pass Russia as the world’s largest producer for oil and gas combined this year – if it hasn’t already.”
Unfortunately, this positive message, thought by many to be of equal importance to America’s future as was President Reagan’s ending of the cold war, is not taught in the Dallas-area Richardson ISD. Rather, RISD seems content to indoctrinate students with the tired, radical environmentalist view that promotes the leftist ideology that fossil fuels are evil.
Such a campaign of misinformation and indoctrination is the result of a methodology called “Project-Based Learning”, an approach promoted by the proponents of the infamous, one-size-fits-all common core national education curriculum foisted upon America’s unsuspecting citizens by President Obama’s Department of Education.
In project based learning, the classroom teacher is no longer the authority for academic facts. Rather, according to the Richardson ISD “vision”, “students are given choices regarding what they learn”.
Project based learning is a concept clearly called out for “continued implementation” in Richardson ISD’s district improvement plan for the 2013-2014 school year.
What is the impact of ”Project-Based Learning” on our students?
On April 22, 2013, I attended an event for citizens who live in the Richardson ISD area. The intent was to promote the district to its residents. One stop was a visit to the 4th grade class at the Brentfield elementary school.
The students were busy, working alone with their IPODS. I sat down with a little guy who was studying energy policy and the environment.
I noticed that his source for the lesson was a liberal-biased publication, Time magazine for Kids. Unlike state-approved textbooks, that traditionally have been reviewed and vetted by hundreds of citizens, parents, taxpayers, and teachers, and then approved by the Texas State Board of Education for use in public schools, sources such as Time Magazine for Kids are simply chosen by administrators in the school district.
The menu of “choices” for student research in the district becomes nothing more than a function of the ideology of those making the selection.
I asked the child, “What do you think of oil companies?”
His 9-year-old knee-jerk response was, “Oil companies are bad. They extract oil from the Earth”.
Further, he volunteered , “All fuel in our gas tanks should be 100% ethanol.”
Another visioning document, this from the common core-promoting Texas Association of School Administrators, tells us, “Students are not just consumers of knowledge, they are creators of knowledge as well.”
So this little guy, who is being exposed to incorrect, biased, and unvetted information, is allowed to believe the information that is being fed to him.
Remember, in the common core visioning environment, teachers are simply facilitators, rather than the classroom authority and presenter of facts. So no one will tell this child the facts: that energy costs to produce a gallon of ethanol exceed the energy available from that gallon.
And, no one will tell this child the economic realities as revealed in the Wall Street Journal, that due to rapidly improving technologies of fracking, and in general locating and extracting oil and gas, the United States is poised to not only surpass Middle East and Russian production, but to create domestic reserves for the foreseeable future.
In short, this child is being indoctrinated with biased information, that is unvetted and unreviewed. What is the potential damage to this nine year old child?
Let’s fast forward this little guy’s life by about 11 years.
On May 28, 2013, I attended Congressman Pete Sessions town hall meeting in Richardson, Texas. Outside the meeting hall, I was approached by a young woman in her early twenties.
Her distinguishing characteristics were wrist to shoulder tats, and a prominent nose ring.
The young woman was carrying a “Stop Fracking” sign. I engaged her in conversation. She was adamant that fossil fuel exploration is destroying the Earth’s biodiversity.
The tragedy is that this young woman, due to being brainwashed in some radical academic environment, is virtually unemployable as a professional in mainstream America. Our Brentfield 4th grader is being guided down the same path.
This scenario about common core’s ideological mischief is not an isolated incident.
Recently, a Denton, Texas parent caught the Denton ISD teaching students that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution gives the right to carry firearms only to members of a state militia. My own review of the CSCOPE 11th grade World War II lesson (CSCOPE is Texas’ educators first step towards common core) reveals undue classroom attention to social engineering subjects such as the Navajo Code talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, and the Japanese internment.
Only one 50 minute period of the seven period WWII module is allocated for ALL of the key campaigns of the War: the Battle of Midway, the U. S. advancement through the Pacific Islands, The Bataan Death March, the invasion of Normandy, fighting the war on multiple fronts, the liberation of concentration camps, and the development and use of atomic weapons.
Meanwhile, students are assigned a laughable, time-wasting “project” of creating an acrostic poem using the name of events and leaders.
Project based learning, indeed. On January 13, 2010, Texas governor Rick Perry wrote to the U. S. Department of Education, rejecting the implementation of the Common Core curriculum in Texas.
Further, common core was banned in Texas public schools during the 2013 Texas legislature session (House Bill 462).
In spite of opposition by the governor, the Texas legislature, and mainstream Texans, superintendents in the Richardson ISD and across Texas are nevertheless implementing the principles of common core, via the adoption of TASA and local “visioning” initiatives.
The superintendents arrogance represents a war on a broader front….local control.
Local control, a recently much-abused definition, really means that the local community dictates school district policy, and the superintendent and administration are hired to implement that policy.
Local control does NOT mean that local superintendents and administrators teach whatever they please, and the community be damned.
It is time for citizens, parents, and our legislators to step up against school districts that indoctrinate our kids with false ideology, while ignoring the rule of law and academic facts.
Hint for the next legislative session: School districts that insist on implementing common core and project based learning should be denied state funding.
Bill Ames is an education activist who lives in Dallas. His book, Texas Trounces the Left’s war on History (WNAenterprises.com) tells the story of his experience in developing Texas’ U. S. history standard in 2009-2010. He is currently reviewing CSCOPE lessons as part of the State Board of Education’s ad hoc committee project, and is available to deliver presentations to interested groups. He welcomes reader comments at billames@prodigy.net.
SERIES EDITOR Jeanine McGregor, known to most in the Texas Education Debate as ”Ms. Mac”, is an Award-Winning Teacher, an educational researcher, and an author-publisher as CEO of Character of American Productions. She is also producer of Ms. Mac’s Schoolhouse, and the innovative “Ms. Mac TV” Program.
It took me almost a year of researching to find out why there was such a veil of secrecy surrounding CSCOPE. I discovered it has been the implementation of a radical change in the way Texas students will be educated. This radical change is not new though it’s name changes with the times. Presently it is called “Project Based Learning”. Project Based Learning is built around the collective and not individual achievement. American Sovereignty is not taught. Globalization and Diversity are promoted. The Texas Education Service Centers along with school Superintendents have worked deceptively in implementing this progressive philosophy in the school system since 2006. After much research the implementation of PBL can be traced back to the United Nations.
Texas schools through grant money and state funds have purchased millions of dollars of computers so students can be electronically engaged. Become more a part of the global society.
IRINA BOKAVA, the Director General of UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations, (UNESCO) was quoted as saying….
In 2011 Ms. Bokava at Effat University in Saudia Arabia for the Learning and Technology Conference. In her address she is quoted as saying…..
Ms. Bokava is the author of NEW HUMANISM FOR THE 21st CENTURY which promotes diversity, globalization all on the promise of world peace.
UNESCO along with international education bureaucracies goal is to Internet Communication Technology (ICT) coupled with Project Based Learning . That is why we are seeing Texas schools districts spending an enormous amount of money on IPAD’s and laptop for students.
Below is the Alliance For Excellent Education. It is to no surpise that Humanist Linda Darling Hammond sits on the Board of Directors. CSCOPE also credits it’s teaching philosophy to Hammond.
The following is a list of CSCOPE lessons or excerpts that have been exposed over the last year that should concern any Texas parent, grandparent, or pastor. Feel free to make copies and educate your community of this progressive/marxist/communist indoctrination taking place in their local schools. Many of the lessons CSCOPE reps have now been altered or removed since making them public. My question is……………..
(this is the CSCOPE attachment used with the lesson. CSCOPE has cherry picked his words to fit their liberal agenda..) Read this blog and see the original journal entries and see CSCOPE’S bias.
13) Islamic Web links given to students through CSCOPE lessons
a) CSCOPE web link… The Islam Project – on this sight you children have access to the following info under the title Community Engagement, etc….CSCOPE LESSON
Anderson-Shiro CISD is continuing to LEASE the controversial CSCOPE product (aka Teks Resource System). There was a state audit in regard to the finances surrounding the Cscope material which was condemning. Here is the report. The contents of the product can be accessed free from the Texas Education Agency with exception of the assessments, which are useless and nothing more than a document to collect data on students. A test and assessment are different. A test is used to access a students knowledge on material learned. Assessments are used to access students on data they do not know and collect the data. Assessments do not come home.
Anderson-Shiro CISD has also signed onto the radical transformation of education with Texas Association of School Administrators called Creating a New Vision of Texas Education . This transformation is built on the leveling the playing field for all students. The ISD has hired an outside consulting company Engage 2 Learn whose purpose is to convince the community what a great idea this transformation is.
Anderson-Shiro CISD paid Engage 2 Learn over $10,000 in April, 2014. Why does the district feel the need to spend thousands to convince the community how wonderful this transformation is?
Former Anderson-Shiro Superintendent Brandon Core initialed this transformation. Mr. Core has now gone to work for the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) who is responsible for this transformation. So Mr. Core supported the company TASA with our tax dollars while superintendent; now he has gone to work for the same company. Wow! Sad thing is numerous Texas ISD are doing the same thing supporting with your tax dollars outside consulting firms and agencies then going to work for them.
Texas Superintendent Dr. Jeff Turner of Coppell ISD is determined to transform the the way students will be taught. The transformation is of a progressive nature where “absolute truth” & “American Exceptionalism” is not taught. Students create their own learning in collaborative groups called Project Based Learning (PBL) (aka outcome based education). This year Coppell opened the New Tech High School applying PBL teaching philosophy. New Tech is part of the New Tech Network based in Napa California and funded mainly by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation with the goal of transforming education nation wide. New Tech Network has partnered with Educate Texas.
Engage 2 Learn is an outside consultant company ran by Clark & Shannon Buerk that is working with the TASA’s New Vision to further implement their transformation plan. Shannon is the former assistant superintendent attendant of curriculum & instruction of Coppell ISD. Their community meetings are a “consensus” meeting with the Delphi Technique used. They already have their plan/agenda in place and want lead the community to believe their input in valuable in their decision. It is a smoke screen being utilized across the state of Texas.
Have you noticed how much our country has changed ideologically and how divided we Americans are as a people?
Trust me it is all by design.
A little over 3 years ago my mother, a former Texas Teacher and science author Janice VanCleave called me a political activist to investigate and expose the controversial pro Communist & Islamic Curriculum sold in over 90% of Texas Schools. At the time neither of us knew what we were uncovering. Despite the content Cscope was the implementation of a Cultural Marxist teaching philosophy into our Texas Schools. The same pedagogy goes by an assortment of names such as Common Core, Project Based Learning, 21st Century Learning, Social Emotional Learning, Out come based education, Competency Based Learning, etc, etc. The teaching philosophy behind all are not about creating an equal opportunity for students to succeed on their own accord but it has the end game in mind and molds children to that end.
One may wonder why this is happening. As I said earlier this is all by design and it is planned by the powers at be (George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, Aspen Institute, Bildeburgs, Rockerfellers, Bushs, etc, etc) in creating a planned economy and Global Society. How would one change a complete society? They would start with our children and that is exactly what they have done.
You hear politicians say that they have gotten rid of Common Core and given control back to the states. This is all a lie and smoke and mirrors. They passed the Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015 removing academics in America’s classrooms to complete the teaching philosophy of Social Emotional Learning.
The following individuals make up the Texas Commission of Assessments of Accountability and sent their final report to the Government asking to align our Texas State Standards with that of the federal ESSA standards.
• Chair: Andrew Kim, Superintendent, Comal ISD (appointed by Governor Abbott)
• Vice-Chair: Stacy Hock, Co-owner, Hock, LLC (appointed by Governor Abbott)
• Kim Alexander, Superintendent, Roscoe Collegiate ISD (appointed by Lieutenant Governor Patrick)
• Jimmie Don Aycock, Chair, House Committee on Public Education, Texas House of Representatives
• Erika Beltran, Member, State Board of Education, District 13 (appointed by SBOE Chair Bahorich)
• Paul Castro, Superintendent, A+Unlimited Potential Charter School District (appointed by Lieutenant Governor Patrick)
• Pauline Dow, Chief Instructional Officer, North East ISD (appointed by House Speaker Straus)
• Maria Hernandez Ferrier, President Emeritus, Texas A&M University San Antonio (appointed by House Speaker Straus)
• Michael McLendon, Dean, School of Education, Baylor University (appointed by Lieutenant Governor Patrick)
• Kel Seliger, Chair, Committee on Higher Education, Texas State Senate
• Catherine Susser, Member, Board of Trustees, Corpus Christi ISD (appointed by House Speaker Straus)
• Larry Taylor, Chair, Committee on Education, Texas State Senate
WOW!! Do we have anyone in our Texas Legislature care about this? Is this not alarming to you?
There is and has been for a few years now of a great group of Conservative Activist working to expose what is actually happening in our Texas Education and across the country that is detrimental to our children and the country.
This school year the CYFAIR ISD school board decided to no longer open their school board meetings with prayer. Appalling as that is it is equally appalling that they have chosen to spend taxpayer dollars on a progressive education consulting firm that are friendly with the “Nation of Islam” and its leader Louis Farrakhan who has called for the “STALKING and KILLING” of white people.
This past June Texas School District, Cyfair ISD held a progressive Education Conference titled “Leadership RRR”. The RRR stands for Rigor, Relationship and Relevance. One thing you will learn when you actually study what “educrats” are up to, behind the scenes they will change the definitions of words to accomplish their liberal progressive agenda. “Rigor” is NOT defined in our education system today as making students study and working harder. Today “Rigor” is the diminishing of academic contentand creating an education system of “Social, Emotional, Learning” (SEL) in transforming our society. Note: Rigor, Relationship, Relevance. Where is the READING WRITING and ARITHMETIC? None of the speakers or consulting firms invited to speak at this conference were to address academic content. It was all about transforming how/what students are taught.
Cyfair’s “Leadership Conference” hired an progressive consulting firm “New Frontier 21” for the June Conference. New Frontier 21 came under my radar last school year after learning the Texas (ASCD) Association of Academic Development invited them to their conference. Note: ASCD was also invited to the CYFAIR conference.
CYFAIR paid New Frontier 21 a $6,500.00 speaking fee. I also have found where CYFAIR paid them a $5,500 in 2011. OUTRAGEOUS!
New Frontier 21 is owned and operated by Dr. Anthoney Muhammad and operated out of Dearborn, Michigan area.
Dr. Muhammad is on friendly terms with Nation of Islam Leader, Louis Farrakhan as you will see from their business affiliations and social media behavior.
The photo below is from the Nation of Islam’s online newspaper, Final Call dated August 17, 2011 where Dr. Muhammad joined with Farrakhan for a speaking engagement at the Nation of Islam’s First Ministry of Education Conference.
In 2009, Dr. Muhammad joined with the Nation of Islam and the Muhammad Universities for speaking engagements in transforming education. You can read about it HERE.
Shahid Muhammad, often referred to as the Math Dr. joined Louis Farrahkan at the University of Islam (MUI) for speaking engagements as well. Shahid is quoted the following when asked what is Mathematics.
You can find the full interview at …..The FINAL CALL
Dr Math Bear Witness of Farrakhan.
Those responsible for teaming up with the Nation of Islam agenda are the board members for.
“Why Handwriting Is Still Essential in the Keyboard Age”
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
eXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE:
Do children in a keyboard world need to learn old-fashioned handwriting?
There is a tendency to dismiss handwriting as a nonessential skill, even though researchers have warned that learning to write may be the key to, well, learning to write.
And beyond the emotional connection adults may feel to the way we learned to write, there is a growing body of research on what the normally developing brain learns by forming letters on the page, in printed or manuscript format as well as in cursive.
In anarticlethis year in The Journal of Learning Disabilities, researchers looked at how oral and written language related to attention and what are called “executive function” skills (like planning) in children in grades four through nine, both with and without learning disabilities.
Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington and the lead author on the study, told me that evidence from this and other studies suggests that “handwriting — forming letters — engages the mind, and that can help children pay attention to written language.”
Last year in anarticlein The Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Laura Dinehart, an associate professor of early childhood education at Florida International University, discussed several possible associations between good handwriting and academic achievement: Children with good handwriting may get better grades because their work is more pleasant for teachers to read; children who struggle with writing may find that too much of their attention is consumed by producing the letters, and the content suffers.
But can we actually stimulate children’s brains by helping them form letters with their hands? In a population of low-income children, Dr. Dinehart said, the ones who had good early fine-motor writing skills in prekindergarten did better later on in school. She called for more research on handwriting in the preschool years, and on ways to help young children develop the skills they need for “a complex task” that requires the coordination of cognitive, motor and neuromuscular processes.
“This myth that handwriting is just a motor skill is just plain wrong,” Dr. Berninger said. “We use motor parts of our brain, motor planning, motor control, but what’s very critical is a region of our brain where the visual and language come together, thefusiform gyrus, where visual stimuli actually become letters and written words.” You have to see letters in “the mind’s eye” in order to produce them on the page, she said. Brain imaging shows that the activation of this region is different in children who are having trouble with handwriting.
Functional brain scans of adults show a characteristic brain network that is activated when they read, and it includes areas that relate to motor processes. This suggested to scientists that the cognitive process of reading may be connected to the motor process of forming letters.
Karin James, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, did brain scans on children who did not yet know how to print. “Their brains don’t distinguish letters; they respond to letters the same as to a triangle,” she said.
After the children were taught to print,patterns of brain activationin response to letters showed increased activation of that reading network, including the fusiform gyrus, along with the inferior frontal gyrus and posterior parietal regions of the brain, which adults use for processing written language — even though the children were still at a very early level as writers.
“The letters they produce themselves are very messy and variable, and that’s actually good for how children learn things,” Dr. James said. “That seems to be one big benefit of handwriting.”
Handwriting experts have struggled with the question of whether cursive writing confers special skills and benefits, beyond the benefits that print writing might provide. Dr. Berninger cited a 2015studythat suggested that starting around fourth grade, cursive skills conferred advantages in both spelling and composing, perhaps because the connecting strokes helped children connect letters into words.
For typically developing young children, typing the letters doesn’t seem to generate the same brain activation. As we grow up, of course, most of us transition to keyboard writing, though like many who teach college students, I have struggled with the question of laptops in class, more because I worry about students’ attention wandering than to promote handwriting. Still, studies on note taking have suggested that “college students who are writing on a keyboard are less likely to remember and do well on the content than if writing it by hand,” Dr. Dinehart said.
Dr. Berninger said the research suggests that children need introductory training in printing, then two years of learning and practicing cursive, starting in grade three, and then some systematic attention to touch-typing.
Using a keyboard, and especially learning the positions of the letters without looking at the keys, she said, might well take advantage of the fibers that cross-communicate in the brain, since unlike with handwriting, children will use both hands to type.
“What we’re advocating is teaching children to be hybrid writers,” said Dr. Berninger, “manuscript first for reading — it transfers to better word recognition — then cursive for spelling and for composing. Then, starting in late elementary school, touch-typing.”
As a pediatrician, I think this may be another case where we should be careful that the lure of the digital world doesn’t take away significant experiences that can have real impacts on children’s rapidly developing brains. Mastering handwriting, messy letters and all, is a way of making written language your own, in some profound ways…
As a Mom with a student in Argyle ISD, I am very concerned about the direction our school district is heading. As our schools embrace 21st Century Learning and the College and Career ready standards, we must ask ourselves as parents and adults; are our children being harmed by this?
As Moms and Dads, we need to step back and start asking “ourselves”…….
1. If our children graduate from high school or college with the attitudes, values, beliefs, behaviors and a worldview that we oppose and we know it is because their teachers have been trained to believe it is their responsibility to be the devil’s advocate and teach our children ‘Critical Thinking’ and to question and even oppose the foundational beliefs of our family; is that really a solid academic education that will serve our children and their future well?
2. Is our child getting college credits in high school more important than protecting our child’s mind and their soul?
3. If your child graduates from college, gets a great high paying job but no longer respects, much less believes, they are worthy of a strong marriage, a free and prosperous country, and that by the grace of God anything is possible; have we done our best to give our child a strong foundation for a happy joy filled life?
Let me give you a personal story from right here in Argyle ISD. This is what “21st Century Learning” also known as getting students “College and Career Ready” looks like in the classroom.
For a little background, my daughter is the only student in her class whose parents have refused to allow her to use a district issued chrome book or google student account.
One day she texted me screen shots of a quiz her AP/Dual Credit English 3 teacher asked the class to take. Because my daughter did not have a chromebook her teacher told her to take the quiz from her cell phone. The lesson plan for the class shows that they were working on group presentations on philosophy (in an English Class) and these quizzes were a part of the research each group was to do. Each group was assigned a Philosophy and after their research, each group gave a presentation to the class. The Philosophy’s the groups were assigned were….
1. Utilitarianism
2. Objectivism
3. Civil Disobedience
4. Existentialism
5. Categorical Imperative
6. Hierarchy of Human Needs
7. Social Contract
Parents!! Would you want your child taking a quiz called ‘Philosophy Experiments,’ in high school, much less on their district issued Chromebook, that grades their answers, compatibility, and then gives the student a “tension score” on a bar graph. Whatever two answers contradict, it plays devils advocate and makes the student question their beliefs.
Here are just some of the questions asked:
* There are no objective moral standards; moral judgements are merely an expression of the values of particular cultures. Agree or Disagree
* So long as they do not harm others, individuals should be free to pursue their own ends. Agree or Disagree
* It is always wrong to take another persons life. Agree or Disagree
* The right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant in any effort to save lives. Agree or Disagree
* Homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural. Agree or Disagree
* It is quite reasonable to believe in the existence of a thing without even the possibility of evidence for its existence. Agree or Disagree
* There exists an all-powerful, loving and good God. Agree or Disagree
* The second world war was a just war. Agree or Disagree
* There are no objective truths about matters of fact; “truth” is always relative to particular cultures and individuals. Agree or Disagree
* Atheism is a faith just like any other, because it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God. Agree or Disagree
* To allow an innocent child to suffer needlessly when one could easily prevent it is morally reprehensible. Agree or Disagree
* The holocaust is an historical reality, taking place more or less as the history books report. Agree or Disagree
As I said, where there is a conflict with two answers, it analyzes the two and scores the student.
Here is an example……
Statements 5 and 29: Can you put a price on a human life?
28% of the people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.
You agreed that:
The right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant in any effort to save lives
But disagreed that:
Governments should be allowed to increase taxes sharply to save lives in the developing world
If the right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant when it comes to making decisions about saving human lives, then that must mean that we should always spend as much money as possible to save lives. If it costs £4 million to save a cancer patient’s life, that money should be spent, period. But if this is true, then surely the West should spend as much money as possible saving lives in the developing world. You may already give $100 dollars a month to save lives in the developing world. But if financial considerations are irrelevant when it comes to saving lives, why not $200, or $1000, or just as much as you can afford? If you do not do so, you are implicitly endorsing the principle that individuals and governments are not obliged to save lives at all financial cost – that one can spend ‘enough’ on saving lives even though spending more, which one could afford to do, would save more lives. This suggests that financial considerations are relevant when it comes to making decisions about saving lives – there is a limit to how much one should spend to save a life.
______________________________________________
28% of the people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.
You agreed that:
There exists an all-powerful, loving and good God
And also that: To allow an innocent child to suffer needlessly when one could easily prevent it is morally reprehensible
These two beliefs together generate what is known as ‘The Problem of Evil’. The problem is simple: if God is all-powerful, loving and good, that means he can do what he wants and will do what is morally right. But surely this means that he would not allow an innocent child to suffer needlessly, as he could easily prevent it. Yet he does. Much infant suffering is the result of human action, but much is also due to natural causes, such as disease, flood or famine. In both cases, God could stop it, yet he does not.
Attempts to explain this apparent contradiction are known as ‘theodicies’ and many have been produced. Most conclude that God allows suffering to help us grow spiritually and/or to allow the greater good of human freedom. Whether these theodicies are adequate is the subject of continuing debate.
Do you realize these responses and their data can legally be tracked for research purposes by 3rd party contractors? President Obama changed the regulation on the FERPA law? A student’s private data can be collected without parental consent in the name of “Education Research”. Here is a link you can take the quiz yourself. http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/health/Default.aspx
After taking this quiz herself, Clinical Mental Health Counselor Joan Landes stated….
“It’s a classic psychological deconstruction technique to put a person in a double bind and collapse his cognitive framework. Then the “leader” picks up the pieces and reassembles them to order. This is an inappropriate use of psychological force on impressionable minds and unformed identities.”-
Now, you might say, what public high school teacher would think this is a good quiz to give and blame it all on the teacher, but…..
That local superintendent is ultimately in charge of curriculum, and you the locally elected school board are ultimately in charge of approving funding for the professional development of both the teacher and the superintendent. In addition, you are in charge of funding technology used in the classroom that allows for our student’s data to be collected. It has been stated to me that this is an AP/Dual Credit class, therefore it is a college level course and okay. To that I have to ask. Why is this okay in college? It is certainly not appropriate for high school age students.
The challenge with 21st Century Learning/Common Core/College and Career Ready Standards transformation of education, is how teachers are being re- trained to teach. It is their professional development. In addition, administrators are being trained, through their professional development, how to deal with parents who complain. It is actually the teacher who is in danger, because they are many times used as the fall guy. Education is no longer about reading, and writing in a 21st Century English classroom. It is about the 4 C’s Creativity, Communication, Critical Thinking and Collaboration.
In Texas we said NO to the Common Core National Standards, but we’ve said yes to our teachers being re-trained for 21st Century Learning using the InTASC Model CoreTeaching Standards; Learning Progressions for Teachers. The Copyright for these standards is owned by the Council of Chief State School Officers, who as you will remember own the copyright to the Common Core National Standards. They are all aligned to a collectivist philosophy of education. Check out standard #5. When you begin to research what is happening, you will see, this is NOT 21st Century Learning it is simply another push for OBE (Outcome Based Education).
“The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues.”
Clearly worded in the InTASC paper is states; “these standards differ from the original standards in one key respect: These standards are no longer intended only for “beginning” teachers but as professional practice standards.”
The College Board’s SAT and AP (Advanced Placement) assessments and conceptual frameworks can be described as “Transdisiplinary” in their purpose.
Transdisiplinary is when the function of the subject matter, concept themes in the syllabus, and course frameworks are all used to guide how a student views the world. The technical term most commonly used is lenses. Effectively these lenses become the values, attitudes, and beliefs the students are to be taking away from the curriculum.
Therefore my question is, are you okay with this? As parents are you okay with your child in Argyle ISD being taught using these learning theories and teaching strategies?
Argyle ISD is not an isolated incident. Nor is it isolated to AP/Dual Credit classes. This is happening in school districts across Texas. (RISD) Richardson ISD held a meeting for angry parents speaking out against (PBL) Project-based learning. In the audio clip below you will hear Tabitha Branum, Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education (formerly Coppell ISD) describe how teachers are no longer teaching as they did in the past and are being re-trained. She goes on to explain that the STAAR exams no longer ask questions about facts, such as “can you identify this organ” and or “what is the function of this organ?” Then the biology lead teacher explains why they are shifting away from learning facts in exchange for building “social skills”.
I would also like to let you know that my children are NOT allowed to take any surveys online or for the school district, state or federal government. If their grades suffer because of this I would like to let you know about this federal law.
Limits on Survey, Analysis, Evaluations, or Data Collection (United States Code, Title 20 1232h)
(b) Limits on survey, analysis, or evaluations
No student shall be required, as part of any applicable program, to submit to a survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals information concerning—
(1) political affiliations or beliefs of the student or the student’s parent;
(2) mental or psychological problems of the student or the student’s family;
(3) sex behavior or attitudes;
(4) illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, or demeaning behavior;
(5) critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships;
(6) legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers;
(7) religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or student’s parent; or
(8) income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program), without the prior consent of the student (if the student is an adult or emancipated minor), or in the case of an unemancipated minor, without the prior written consent of the parent.
UPDATE
In preparation for the Argyle ISD school board meeting on Tuesday Jan. 19th, 2016. Here is a link to my public testimony at the Jan. 19th meeting.
ACTION ALERT: Texas public school students to be unable to read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution – no cursive writing to be taught
To voice objections to no cursive writing — The public is encouraged to send their comments to the TEA at the following address:TEKS@tea.texas.govand/or to write to the Texas State Board of Education members:
1.5.16 — ADDENDUM TO MY CRITIQUE OF THE NOV. 2015 ELAR/TEKS DRAFT SENT OUT YESTERDAY–
Today, I am sending out an addendum to the critique of the Nov. 2015 DRAFT OF THE ELAR/TEKS that I sent out yesterday (http://www.educationviews.org/critique-nov-2015-texas-elarteks-draft/) in which I verbalized my four Objections to what the Texas English / Language Arts / Reading (ELAR) Review Committee Members had produced.
The reason for this separate addendumis to explain thoroughly my concern that the leadership of the ELAR/TEKS Review Committee Members (RCM) chose to follow the Type #2 philosophy of education as exhibited in the Common Core Standards by taking away cursive handwriting from the Texas public schools.
Here is my Objection #5 which should be added to the Objections #1 – #4 in yesterday’s critique. I have also added Objection #6 at the end of this addendum:
OBJECTION #5
The present ELAR/TEKS document (Beginning with School Year 2009 to the present) states:
(23) Oral and Written Conventions/Handwriting, Capitalization, and Punctuation. Students write legibly and use appropriate capitalization and punctuation conventions in their compositions. Students are expected to:
In the Nov. 2015 ELAR/TEKS Draft, no mention is made of cursive writing to be taught in Grade 3.
Texas is one of the few states that requires cursive writing to be taught, starting in Grade 3. However, for some time, this state mandate in the present ELAR/TEKS to teach cursive has been ignored; and many Texas teachers have quit teaching cursive or correct handwriting habits.
Because Grade 3 teachers have quit teaching cursive, then the students going forward from Grade 3 have no longer had the ability to write nor to read cursive. Because the skills learned in ELAR are competency-based (build upon one another) and because the ELAR/TEKS set explicit goals at each grade level/course level, once students are taught to master a certain skill, then they are to be held accountable in the future grade levels to demonstrate that mastery.
In other words, once students are taught cursive in Grade 3, teachers in the succeeding grade levels can expect students to write cursively and to read text written in cursive writing.
The Common Core Standards deliberately do not support the teaching of cursive writing for two reasons: (1) The agenda behind Obama’s Common Core Standards is to dumb down students to the same common level, and (2) Obama and his administration are indoctrinating students into the social justice agenda.
One of the best ways to indoctrinate this and future generations of students is to make sure they can no longer read the historical documents upon which our nation is founded.
Beyond the obvious (e.g., personal thank-you notes, friendly letters, etc.), if students can no longer read cursive writing, they will not be able to read the primary sources upon which our country is built — the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, journals, diaries, love letters, historical documents, ledgers, etc.
Students will also not be able to read historical and literary documents that come from Britain and other English-speaking nations. This means that large portions of resources in every museum and library in this country and throughout the world would be unintelligible to generations of non-cursive-reading students. They would be forced to have someone else interpret these documents for them which is a dangerous thing in today’s politically correct world.
The advantages of cursive are well documented. Cursive is a much faster form of handwriting than printing because each letter flows into the next letter. If people are without computers and need to be able to take or write notes, their handwriting speed would be severely impaired if they did not know how to write cursively.
Computers are not always accessible and do not always work. Schools are already finding that out as they put their students in digitized textbooks. When the network or the device goes down, all learning stops! As schools are forced to cut their technology budgets and the layers of tech support staffers are overcome with the deluge of techie devices in the schools, these “computer down” occurrences are occurring much more regularly.
Nothing forces students to pay attention to detail better than their having to write their compositions, test answers, open-response questions, timed writings in longhand; and cursive prioritizes classroom time.
When people go into an office to apply for a job, they generally have to fill out applications in longhand. Being able to write quickly, neatly, and clearly gives the prospective employer a favorable impression of the applicant.
How many of us who go to doctors’ offices, dentists’ offices, and hospital/clinic offices frequently are asked to fill out forms? Again, being able to write quickly, neatly, and clearly expedites those office visits and gives healthcare workers important information about our health.
We also have credible research done by qualified, peer-reviewed, published researchers that proves cursive is good for the brain.
…psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.
Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.
“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.
“And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn’t realize,” he continued. “Learning is made easier.”
…When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex.
By contrast, children who typed or traced the letter or shape showed no such effect. The activation was significantly weaker.
…In another study, Dr. James is comparing children who physically form letters with those who only watch others doing it. Her observations suggest that it is only the actual effort that engages the brain’s motor pathways and delivers the learning benefits of handwriting.
Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at the University of Washington, demonstrated that “When the children composed text by hand, they not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on a keyboard, but expressed more ideas…When these children were asked to come up with ideas for a composition, the ones with better handwriting exhibited greater neural activation in areas associated with working memory — and increased overall activation in the reading and writing networks.”
Dr. Berninger goes so far as to suggest that cursive writing may train self-control ability in a way that other modes of writing do not, and some researchers argue that it may even be a path to treating dyslexia.A 2012 review suggests that cursive may be particularly effective for individuals with developmental dysgraphia — motor-control difficulties in forming letters — and that it may aid in preventing the reversal and inversion of letters.
…the benefits of writing by hand extend beyond childhood. For adults, typing may be a fast and efficient alternative to longhand, but that very efficiency may diminish our ability to process new information. Not only do we learn letters better when we commit them to memory through writing, memory and learning ability in general may benefit.
Two psychologists, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles, have reported that in both laboratory settings and real-world classrooms, students learn better when they take notes by hand than when they type on a keyboard…the new research suggests that writing by hand allows the student to process a lecture’s contents and reframe it — a process of reflection and manipulation that can lead to better understanding and memory encoding.
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MY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE ACTUAL HANDWRITING STANDARDS
Not only should cursive handwriting be restored to the Nov. 15 ELAR/TEKS Draft going forward, but the teaching of good handwriting habits should be taught systematically beginning in Kindergarten. As I stated in my comments from 1.4.16, the Oral and Written Conventions strand should be restored to the Nov. 2015 ELAR/TEKS Draft going forward, and the following elements should be added to that strand:
KINDERGARTEN
The student is expected to:
(A) Practice good posture when seated at a table/desk for writing purposes.
(B) Practice proper pencil gripping (using correct fingers to form vise to hold writing tool) while correctly positioning hand and arm in relationship to paper and desk.
(C) Produce correct formation of letters using starting point, directionality, and ending point for each letter.
(D) Identify the top/bottom, front/back, margins, lines on a sheet of paper.
GRADE 1
The student is expected to:
(A) Practice good posture when seated at a table/desk for writing purposes.
(B) Practice proper pencil gripping (using correct fingers to form vise to hold writing tool) while correctly positioning hand and arm in relationship to paper and desk.
(C) Produce correct formation of letters using starting point, directionality, and ending point for each letter.
(D) Identify margins and margin forming lines.
(E) Identify appropriate times for writing outside the margin lines.
(F) Start writing close to left margin line.
(G) Form all letters so they rest on baseline.
(H) Demonstrate correct starting point and stroke sequence for each letter.
(I) Form both lower and upper case letters in correct manuscript style.
(J) Form all letters so they occupy proper space in relationship to other letters.
(K) Allow space between words.
(L) Start next line at the left margin when one line is complete.
(M) Form both lower and upper case letters in correct handwriting style.
GRADE 2
The student is expected to:
(A) Distinguish cursive from printed writing.
(B) Explain the purpose of cursive writing.
(C) Identify appropriate times to use printed writing (e.g., maps, charts) or cursive.
(D) Demonstrate how to form the connecting line between any two given letters.
(E) Produce neat, legible cursive writing (e.g., consistent slant, correct letter formation, correct size).
GRADE 3 – ENG. IV
The student is expected to:
(A) Use neat, legible cursive writing on most school work.
(B) Produce neat, legible cursive writing (e.g., consistent slant, correct letter formation.
OBJECTION #6
In the Nov. 2015 ELAR/TEKS Draft, the wording is as follows in the Introductions for K through Eng. IV:
Introduction
(a)(6) Statements that contain the word “including” reference content that must be mastered, while those containing the phrase “such as” are intended as possible illustrative examples.
I would like to see this wording clarified by deleting the above explanation and inserting the following:
If the curriculum element says “such as” or “e.g.,” – (1) teachers may teach, (2) textbooks/instructional materials must include, (3) the element preceded by “such as” or “e.g.” may or may not be tested on STAAR/EOC’s
If the curriculum element says “including” – (1) teachers must teach, (2) textbooks/instructional materials must include, (3) element is permissible to be tested on STAAR/EOC’s
Victor is a communications specialist for EAG and joined in 2009. Previously, he was a newspaper journalist.
KATY, Texas – A Texas seventh-grader is standing up for her religious beliefs after she alleges her teacher forced students to deny that God is real, and threatened them with failing grades if they don’t agree.
Jordan Wooley, a seventh grade student at West Memorial Junior High School in the Katy Independent School District, testified at a school board meeting last night about an assignment in her reading class that caused a serious controversy, and expressed frustration about her teacher’s atheist indoctrination.
“Today I was given an assignment in school that questioned my faith and told me that God was not real. Our teacher had started off saying that the assignment had been giving problems all day. We were asked to take a poll to say whether God is fact, opinion or a myth and she told anyone who said fact or opinion was wrong and God was only a myth,” Wooley told board members.
Students immediately objected, Wooley said, but the teacher refused to consider their position.
The teacher, “started telling kids they were completely wrong and that when kids argued we were told we would get in trouble. When I tried to argue, she told me to prove it, and I tried to reference things such as the Bible and stories I have read before from people who have died and went to heaven but came back and told their stories, and she told me both were just things people were doing to get attention.
“I know it wasn’t just me who was affected by it. My friend, she went home and started crying. She was supposed to come with me but she didn’t know if she could” because she was so upset, Wooley said.
The teen explained she spoke with other students in the class who were marked down because they believe God is real, as well as compromises proposed by students to avoid rejecting their faith.
“Another student asked the teacher if we could put what we believe in the paper, and she said we could … but you would fail the paper if you do,” Wooley told the board. “I had known before that our schools aren’t really supposed to teach us much about religion or question religion. When I asked my teacher about it she said it doesn’t have anything to do with religion because the problem is just saying there is no God.”
Wooley was accompanied to the meeting by her mother, Chantel Wooley, who texted with her daughter about the assignment earlier in the day and posted a video to Facebook about the incident after school.
“Hey mom so in reading we were required to say that God is just a myth,” Jordan texted her mother shortly before 3 p.m. Monday. “I thought if a question was against our religion that we could put what we think is true but we got in trouble for saying He is true.”
“Wait what? Myth?” Chantel Wooley replied.
“We had to deny God is real. Yeah, we had to say he was just a myth,” Jordan wrote.
“You got in trouble?” Chantel questioned.
“Yeah she told me I was wrong bc I put it was fact,” Jordan wrote.
“What did you say?” Chantel texted.
“I said he is real and she said that can’t be proven,” Jordan replied.
“And what happened?” Chantel wrote.
“I still put fact on my paper,” Jordan texted.
Jordan told school board members her family contacted the school principal, who promised to speak with the teacher and investigate the incident. Board members also vowed to “look into it,” but said school administrators should first focus on addressing the issue.
They also thanked Wooley for voicing her concerns.
In a Facebook video posted to Chantel Wooley’s profile, Jordan explained the situation in more detail.
“Basically, a lot of people said it was true and real, and she told us we were all wrong,” Jordan said. “She told us it was a commonplace assertion, just a myth, and lot of people got upset about it.
“I called my friend to see how she felt about it, and she was just crying,” Wooley continued.
“And how did that make you feel?” an off-camera voice questions.
“Like she was taking away my religion, what I believe is true,” the teen replied.
Texas education activist Alice Linahan told EAGnews the incident, and how district officials respond, could be an especially important indicator of things to come in the Lone Star state.
Katy ISD Superintendent Alton Frailey, president of the national American Association of School Administrators, was a central figure in crafting the state’s education standards as the former president of the Texas Association of School Administrators.
Frailey is now working to expand similar standards nationally, Linahan said, and is reportedly on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s short list to replace education Commissioner Michael Williams, who resigned last week.
Linahan pointed to standards Frailey help craft that require a teacher “understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues,” as evidence that the state standards and closely aligned national Common Core standards divert focus from core subjects to less important issues.
“Will Texas students get a good job when they grow up because they can read well, write well, do math and know history?” Linahan questioned. “Or, will they get a good job, without strong academics, but an emotional attachment and classroom experience to save the world on a global level from a humanist viewpoint, without a belief in God?
“Parents, it is time to step in like Jordan’s mom and say … NO!”
Linahan said Alton Frailey’s role, in both the local issue and the broader education standards, will undoubtedly influence how parents react if he’s appointed the state’s education commissioner by the governor.
“If Governor Abbott names Alton Frailey commissioner of education in Texas, there will be a backlash like … Abbott has never seen before,” Linahan said. “Parents know the truth and we are not going to stand by and watch them do this to our children.”
A nine-year-old Texas schoolboy was suspended from his elementary school for posession of a “magic ring.” Remember the poptart gun? The Nerf gun? The Lego gun? The pointed finger gun? In another time, these typical childrens’ toys would have gotten as little notice as the old fashioned cap gun but in a world where the list of childhood offenses also includes possession of a novelty pen or a Hello Kitty bubble gun, it comes as little surprise that a Lord of the Rings “magic ring” would land Aiden Steward in suspension from his elementary school in Kermit, Texas.
The story spread like wildfire from Yahoo News! to FOX News, originating with the Odessa American’s original report on the budding fourth grade magician who was accused of “terrorizing” his classmates because he said that he would make them “disappear” with his Hobbit prop. Unfortunately, in the 21st Century classroom, displays of “make-believe” are not taken with a grain of salt. Instead, they are perceived through a wary eye, often warranting the kind of macabre school sanctioned remediation that transforms kiddies into criminals.
Two years before Aiden’s run-in with campus zero tolerance policies, seven year-old Alex Evans, a Colorado second grader suspended for throwing an imaginary hand grenade while pretending to “rescue the world” from “pretend evil forces,” and, as the New Americanreported, “Little Alex, it turns out, violated his school’s ‘absolutes’ against fighting and weapons, ‘real or imaginary.’” There was also seven-year-old Christopher Marshall from Virginia, who was suspended for using a pencil to “pretend shoot” a bad guy — his friend, who, in turn, was also suspended for “pretend shooting” Christopher back.
Welcome to public school, a place where the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights March 2014 snapshot of the 2011-12 school year showed that boys, as a demographic group regardless of race and/or socioeconomic strata, represented 79% of preschool children suspended once and 82% of preschool children suspended multiple times, although boys only represented 54% of preschool enrollment.
Even a Yale University study revealed that boys are nearly five times more likely to be expelled from preschool than girls.
According to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS), which is the longitudinal database that tracks student population, 5,289,752 students were enrolled in Texas public schools in 2013-14. Of those, 2,572,354 were girls and 2,717,398, boys — In-School-Suspension (ISS) was handed out to boys 921,120 times, that’s 43% higher than girls who only had 390,781 ISS actions filed against them, also according to PEIMS. The TEA reported that the number of all students who served in ISS K-12 statewide in 2013-14 was 524,268, of which 352,868 were boys, 171,400 were girls.
The Texas Education Code 37.005 defines suspension: (a) The principal or other appropriate administrator may suspend a student who engages in conduct identified in the student code of conduct adopted under Section 37.001 as conduct for which a student may be suspended. (b)A suspension under this section may not exceed three school days.
ISS is a newer phenomenon that allows schools to receive their Average Daily Attendance (ADA) dollars, which is the combination of federal and state funds that school districts nationwide receive per student per day just because the child shows up. With ISS the “suspended” child is sequestered yet housed on the campus and is technically “in school,” rather than an Out-of-School Suspension (OSS), which is treated as an absence.
However, ISS is particularly troubling to Texas Appleseed because, unlike OSS, there are no limits on the number of days a student may spend in ISS, according to the non-profit organization’s School to Prison Pipeline project. In their backgrounder Texas School Discipline Policies: A Statistical Overview it states, “ISS programs generally do not consist of any instructional time – most ISS programs are run like a study hall, and are not staffed by a certified teacher.”
The report also points out that school districts are required to refer students to ISS for certain types of violations, usually those involving drugs, weapons, or violent behavior. However, the Texas Education Code gives school districts the authority to refer students for “discretionary” offenses that generally include behavior like use of profanity, failure to turn in work, or behavior that teachers label “disruptive.”
Problem is, “disruptive” can be a broadly used term and in the all-encompassing-compliant-or-else environment being fostered and dictated by zero tolerance policies and safe schools plans, the one demographic feeling the self-esteem squeeze in all this are boys.
Jason Steward, the nine-year old’s father told Breitbart Texas that Kermit Elementary School Assistant Principal Danny Camp accused Aiden of being a “racist” in September 2014. Aiden was a newly enrolled student. The administrator did not even know his son when when he was playing a “hold your breath the longest” game to see whose face would turn reddest. An innocent comment Aiden made about another child’s dark-skin became a socially-charged rally cry for equity. According to Steward, Aiden was scolded by Camp, not for calling another boy black but for mistaking the boy was African-American when he was Hispanic.
Steward tried to explain to Camp that Aiden did not mean anything derogatory and was just pointing out skin color differences. “How is a nine-year-old boy supposed to know what is PC?,” Steward told Breitbart Texas.
It did not matter. Aiden got his first ISS. The second came in mid-October over allegedly “sexually graphic” material the boy brought into school. It was from the Big Book of Knowledge and was an illustrated science class cut-away belly-only diagram of a pregnancy. Not exactly Playboy.
With the third incident, the Stewards turned to the media. They felt there was nowhere else to turn. The TEA cannot intervene. Suspensions are considered a local matter, spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson told Breitbart Texas.
The underlying issues behind the suspensions are not new. In 2001, Christina Hoff Sommers identified a war on boys that grew out of what she termed a misguided feminism. It is one that has emasculated the classroom. By 2013, Sommers worried that the public schools had become too hostile for boys. She wrote, “In grades K-12, boys account for nearly 70% of suspensions, often for minor acts of insubordination and defiance.”
Regardless of racial, ethnic or socioeconomic strata, Sommers pointed out cases of 7-8-9 year-old boys charged with suspensions, yet there was “no insubordination or defiance.” All these youngsters may have been guilty of was was being a boy. Sommers emphasized that in “today’s school environment, that can be a punishable offense.”
This rigidity continues into the middle and high school years. Zero tolerance is the backbone of “safe schools” and “threat assessment” plans that rolled out in public schools long before Columbine (1999) or Sandy Hook (2012). The Safe School Initiative was a joint project of the US Department of Education and the US Secret Service to prevent school shootings.
USA Todayreported that these harsh public school zero-tolerance policies took hold in 1994 when “Congress required states to adopt laws that guaranteed one-year expulsions for any student who brought a firearm to school. All 50 states adopted such laws, which were required to receive federal funding. Many legislatures went further, expanding the definition of a weapon and further limiting the discretion of school administrators.”
Today, Texas public education budgets heavily for security systems, in-house campus police and zero tolerance programs; yet, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that only approximately 1% of students ages 12 to 18 reported a violent victimization at school. Sommers highlighted that this figure is one-tenth of 1%. Bottom line, as Sommers suggests, the overwhelming majority of boys are not sociopathic.
Yet, in today’s dystopian classroom, the male student finds himself struggling in a “climate” that generally favors more compliant and less kinetically wired girls.
“Across the country, schools are policing and punishing the distinctive, assertive sociability of boys. Many much-loved games have vanished from school playgrounds,” Sommers wrote, spotlighting that “tug or war” has been replaced by “tug of peace” and dodge ball and tag are considered “bullying” or “human target” games. They are banned in many states.
The Huffington Postreported that in Massachusetts, one Superintendent of Schools said that their district spent a lot of time making sure their kids were “violence free”. In California, pee-wee basketball is “score-free” so as not to hurt the other team’s feelings.
The American Psychological Association (APA) Zero Tolerance Task Force questioned, in 2008, if after 20 years all these zero tolerance policies have only negatively affected the relationship of education “with juvenile justice and appear to conflict to some degree with current best knowledge concerning adolescent development.”
The APA also noted that “Rather than reducing the likelihood of disruption, however, school suspension in general appears to predict higher future rates of misbehavior and suspension among those students who are suspended.”
Sommers, too, wondered about the on-going mad science experiment in public schools. It is designed “to re-engineer the young-male imagination.” She noted that this attempt is only succeeding in one way in the public schools — in sending a clear and unmistakable message to millions of schoolboys: You are not welcome in school.”
Meanwhile, elementary school-aged boys just like Aiden Steward walk away with quite a “ding” on their school permanent records.
Breitbart Texas attempted to contact Assistant Principal Camp and Kermit Elementary principal Roxane Greer for comment but was redirected to Bill Boyd, Superintendent of Schools office. The superintendent’s secretary said they were issuing a press release only on the matter. Breitbart Texas requested it several times. It was not sent to us before press time.
While Americans are lured into a complacent sleep by the constant drum beat of social justice, minority rights, inequality, the need for fairness and tolerance and diversity and to be non-judgmental of others or their views, forces are at work to exploit that sentiment.
While the world is filled with the news of Islamic terror other Islamists are at work to silence the critics by holding informational conferences and conducting public outreach.
One such case is happening in Texas at the Curtis Culwell Center (Garland Independent School District property) which is hosting an Islamic conference titled “Stand with the Prophet in Honor and Respect” that proclaims the need to be “Ready to defeat Islamophobia?” according to the Sound Vision Foundation, “a not for profit organization serving Muslims.” The event is scheduled for Saturday, January 17, at 5:00 pm.
The Sound Vision Foundation’s web site states in part: Ready to defeat Islamophobia? This is not an event. It is the beginning of a movement. A movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message. This benefit will raise funds to establish a Strategic Communication Center for the Muslim community, which will develop effective responses to anti-Islamic attacks, as well as to train young Muslims in media.
Really?
And two of the speakers slated for this event are: Imam Siraj Wahhaj and Abdul Malik Mujahid. So just who are these individuals?
Imam Siraj Wahhaj (according to the Clarion Project web site)
Wahhaj was listed as an “unindicted person who may be alleged as co-conspirators” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Wahhaj supports the implementation of Sharia (Islamic law) governance, including its criminal punishments. “Islam is better than democracy. Allah will cause his deen [Islam as a complete way of life], Islam to prevail over every kind of system, and you know what? It will happen,” he has preached.
In September 2013, the NYPD justified its surveillance of Masjid at-Taqwa by pointing to evidence of terrorist and criminal activity there. The assistant imam is suspected of using the mosque to raise money for terrorist groups.
Wahhaj has been a Vice President of the Islamic Society of North America since 1997 and was a member of the North American Islamic Trust’s Board of Advisors from 1989 to 1993.
Abdul Malik Mujahid (according to the web site CreepingSharia)
said “Qital [killing] is an essential element of Islam. And sometimes you don’t like it. Qital is ordained upon you, though it is hateful to you, but it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you….And one example is, now we have 60 or so Muslim countries, and not a single one of them wants to go for Qital and Jihad for Bosnia. Qital is ordained upon you though it is hateful to you.”
It is absolutely disappointing that a Garland Independent School District would host an event that is aimed at fighting against honest, God fearing Americans who have legitimate concerns about the Islamist movement in America and around the world.
Would Garland host a Nazi Conference? A KKK conference? An Aryan Nation or skinhead conference? An anti-Semitic conference? Then why this one?
Contact the Curtis Culwell Center in Texas and the Garland Independent School District and let them know you think this is an outrage and should be cancelled.
It’s clear Islamists never rest (they lie in wait) and never should non-Muslim Americans rest in the face of such propaganda! Jefferson said to be ever vigilant and educated to the threats of freedom. These groups, like the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) are attempting to misinform the public about Islam and teach others how to brand anything anti-Islam as Islamophobia.
When one group of Americans is unable to criticize that with which they passionately disagree they are no longer being treated as equals. They don’t see it this way, why, because Islam doesn’t see non-Muslim as equals. Some might say I know a Muslim, I work with a Muslim, I have a Muslim friend or a Muslim neighbor, they treat me well. They just might, good for them, however Islam, their religion, does not. Muhammad didn’t treat his neighbors well – he killed them. And a conference that calls for honoring and respecting Muhammad is an affront to everything American.
The prophet of Islam was a pedophile, a rapist, a polygamist, a racist, a tyrant and a murderer. I don’t find that worth defending – calling it honorable or respectable is beyond an outrage.
Tolerating evil is evil itself. Islamic law, Sharia, does not recognize let alone respect Democracy, liberty or freedom of speech, so if you do, if you believe in God-given inalienable rights — you had better start using them while you still have them.
Voltaire said, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” When we cannot be critical of an ideology that has been a murdering totalitarian force for 1,400 years something has gone wrong with logic, facts and reason. No matter how many “good” Muslims we might know — Islam is anything but peaceful, it is totalitarian, it is deadly to non-Muslims. Just look around you!
Sharia Law reveals an impassible gulf between Islamic and Western thought and American law. In America, the government derives it’s just powers from the governed and acknowledges the inalienable rights of every individual, of which justice and protection from violence is foremost.
Islam’s legal system is radically different: the father is “governor” or “administrator” of the family. That is, he is a sovereign within his domestic realm, with the right to employ violence to control his wife, children, and others. That alone makes Sharia Law incompatible with the Western concept of human rights.
U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights:
Article 5 – No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Most, if not all states have laws that prohibit Domestic Abuse, Battery, Terror Threats, etc. that include fines, community service, and up to three years in prison.
Islamic Sharia Law (*Reliance of the Traveller):
Obligation to Command the Right and Forbid the Wrong – Muslims are obligated to discipline others. If censuring with harsh words, breaking things, or intimidation does not work, Muslims are obligated “to directly hit or kick the person, or use similar measures that do not involve weapons.” (Section q5.8)
Wife beating – “[A husband] may hit her, but not in a way that injures her, meaning he may not break bones, wound her, or cause blood to flow.” (Section m10.12)
Honor killing – “The following are not subject to retaliation: a father or mother for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring. (Section o1.2(4))
Killing an apostate – “There is no indemnity for killing an apostate. Or any expiation, since it is killing someone who deserves to die.” (Section o8.4)
Obligation to engage in Jihad – “Jihad is a communal obligation upon Muslims each year.” (Section o9.1) The objective of jihad is: “The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” (Section o9.8)
David is a deacon at his local church and a perpetual student of religion, politics and American history. Author, speaker, blogger, David lives in Southern California with his wife and their three children. You can follow him on Twitter @cogitarus or online at cogitarus.wordpress.com. He’s available for speaking engagements upon request.
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Most parents want their children to grow up to be kind, compassionate, charitable adults. So when schools sponsor activities which foster giving, most parents are supportive.
In the past few years, a new “giving program” has been developed called “Giving Tuesday.” The group’s website states:
“We have a day for giving thanks. We have two for getting deals. Now, we have #GivingTuesday, a global day dedicated to giving back. On Tuesday, December 2, 2014, charities, families, businesses, community centers, and students around the world will come together for one common purpose: to celebrate generosity and to give.”
Sounds good. After all, the Christmas Season has always been known in America as our most charitable time of year.
“Giving Tuesday” even provides k-12 school curriculum free on their website to help teachers and schools develop “giving” programs and “encourage” everyone – students, staff, parents and the community – to participate.
Sounds like something most Texas parents could support.
But when President Obama issued a “Giving Tuesday” message and Harris County Department of Education (HCDE -the federal government’s back door into Texas public schools) pushed “Giving Tuesday” and linked to the “Giving Tuesday” website for schools to “get ideas,” I decided to look deeper. After all, it wasn’t just a coincidence that Arne Duncan visited HCDE in person.
(Note: HCDE is a leftover government entity from 1889 and a past era of Texas education when counties operated our public schools. It still exists only because of a loophole democrats passed back in 1995. HCDE does not answer to the Texas Education Agency, the Commissioner of Education, or the County Commissioners so they have made themselves the federal government’s liaison into Texas public schools. They by-pass TEA and push the federal “cradle to grave” programs across the state.)
HCDE not only posted the link to the “Giving Tuesday” website, they encouraged Texas public schools to participate saying:
“Giving Tuesday” Get Your Campus Involved
Teachers will want to know about #GivingTuesday, a global day for giving back….
As a teacher, you can encourage your students and parents to take action
Organize an event on your campus
Announce a new fundraising initiative for your school that day
Please don’t forget about #Giving Tuesday Dec. 2
Share your #Unselfie.
But a closer look shows the “Giving Tuesday” free curriculum teaches “lessons” that would not be acceptable to many parents, and certainly not to any conservative ones.
Investigate the idea of Privilege in order to raise awareness about the way that both you and others DO and DO NOT experience Privilege in your communities.
Text: “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.” – McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
1. What does McIntosh mean by “white privilege”? Why is it invisible?
2. What might be in that “invisible package”? Create a list.
3. Why does McIntosh state that white privilege is “meant” to be something that one does not recognize?
ANSWER: “Charity is just writing checks and not being engaged. Philanthropy, to me, is being engaged, not only with your resources but getting people involved and doing things that haven’t been done before.” — Eli Broad
In contrast to 19th century “charity,” which had been destined for the needy (it was a form of social welfare), philanthropy of the 20th century was “for mankind.” The shift from charity to philanthropy occurred when the Rich partnered with progressive elites of the academic world, local governments, and professional associations. They all worked together to generate progress in science, education, human rights and public health…The “foundation” was created at the beginning of the 20th century as a way to channel big money to important social causes designed to promote human progress…Our nation has come to view philanthropy as both a quintessential part of being American and another means of achieving major objectives. American citizens embrace the idea that with rights come duties; we have the duty to work for social justice as members of a larger community.
Do research on the Internet to find out how BIG philanthropy has helped and will continue to help everyone—even those who donate the money. You may want to begin with the following names: Johns Hopkins, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet.
Prior to the airing of a BBC documentary in October 1984, Americans had heard very little about the Ethiopian famine. Since the Reagan administration was reluctant to send provisions directly to this socialist regime, it actually cut its food assistance – to zero – in 1984…After it aired, the BBC film shocked the world: 10 to 12 million people were starving or on the verge of starvation in Ethiopia….The LIVE AID rock concerts in London and Philadelphia in July 1985 sought to raise money for the starving of Ethiopia. An estimated global audience of 1.9 billion, across 150 nations, watched the live broadcast. Famous singers such as Elton John, Madonna, and Phil Collins participated…Mass fundraising efforts led to the distribution of 20,000 tons of food to two million people each month…After the concerts, the Reagan administration changed course and approved $45 million for USAID to buy and transport 80,000 metric tons of food…This event led to the passing of the African Relief and Recovery Act (1985), whereby aid for “rehabilitation” was deemed by Congress to be legal – even in socialist countries. Funding for irrigation projects, seeds and tools, and training in health skills became possible…
Using the following historical notes, teach students about the backlash against President Johnson’s approach to eradicating poverty in the United States.
“In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched a War on Poverty: his goal was to create better schools, health, homes, and job opportunities. To attain this goal, the federal government created programs like Head Start, Legal Services, the Job Corps, Medicaid and improvements in Social Security. It was the responsibility of the government to lend a helping hand to the poor. Yet ever since this War on Poverty, conservatives have championed the idea that the poor are responsible themselves for their own poverty with bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles.”
How can you persuade others that your ideas are valid, relevant, and infused with a sense of purpose – without coming across as pushy and without offending your audience?
“Giving Tuesday” states that the purpose of teachers using their curriculum is NOT to foster charity in the hearts of school children, it is to use the students to FUND RAISE.
(You can read the entire curriculum here.)My Observations
Besides being extremely biased, left leaning material, which may be objectionable to many Texas parents, it is questionable if this curriculum is even legal in Texas.
Texas Education Code Sec. 29.906 outlines character education restrictions for Texas public schools. “Charity” (not philanthropy) is a character trait listed in the statute and requires curriculum be approved by a school district committee before being used in the classroom. This committee must consist of:
parents of district students;
educators; and
other members of the community, including community leaders.
Statute also includes the following statement:
This section does not … authorize proselytizing or indoctrinating concerning any specific … political belief.
DALLAS, Texas — On the week of November 17-21, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will reconvene for a final week of meetings in the ongoing Social Studies textbook adoption process. Called Proclamation 2015 to reflect the 2015-16 school year that these instructional materials will be implemented. The Social Studies textbooks were last updated last in 2002.
Breitbart Texas has reported on the Social Studies adoption process, noting Texas Freedom Network’s (TFN) beef with the open and transparent process that requires public participation. Breitbart Texas also reported on the troubling textbook findings that emerged — blaring historical omissions, factual errors and leftwing bias.
TFN education establishment progressives have painstakingly tried to convince Americans that the Texas public K-12 Social Studies department has been taken hostage by the Tea Party and Christian evangelicals.
Through TFN’s Education Fund (TFNEF), they “contracted” professors at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, the University of Mary Washington in Virginia and the University of Texas at Austin for a review independent of the one conducted by the SBOE, according to TFN.
Breitbart Texas looked at TFNEF’s Texas Rising, which seeks out “young leaders” on Texas college campuses for the group’s stated mission — to develop a “social justice-minded” generation to push “progressive public policy in Texas.”
On the other hand, TTT, also conducted an independent review. Coalition founder Ret. Lt. Col. Roy White told Breitbart Texas they formed for the “single purpose of improving the factual accuracy of social studies textbooks for the five million children of Texas who will use these textbooks beginning in the 2015-16 school year.”
These unpaid reviewers included scholars, curriculum accuracy experts and 100-plus volunteers who donated thousands of hours to reviewing the Social Studies textbook. Among them were Dr. Andrew Bostom, Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School also known for his recognized analyses on Islam, Jihad and Muslim anti-Semitism; and Dr. Amy Jo Baker, the retired director of Social Studies for the San Antonio Independent School District and president of the Texas Council for History Education. She is affiliated with the National Council for History Education.
Dr. Sandra Alfonsi, who oversees textbook review programs for ACT! for America and Textbook Alert, also participated. Previously, she told Breitbart Texas that the textbooks were loaded up with bias — progressive bias.
TTT reviewed the same textbooks as TFN — from publishing giants Pearson, McGraw Hill, Discovery Education, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Worldview, Perfection, and Cengage.
TFN’s review netted hysterical headlines about Moses as the father of our country. A former SMU educrat trembled to the Texas Tribune that students would believe that the Hebrew lawgiver “was the first American.”
Barring leftwing hyperbole, someone thought he played some role. The perceived likeness of Moses adorns the US Supreme Court with the 10 Commandments. He is also the central of 23 historical figures hanging overhead in the House Chamber of the United States Capitol.
The Washington Post, the Associated Press (AP) and the Huffington Post all chimed in on TFN’s false narrative, alleging a fantastical rightwing grip on Texas public education, attacking the textbook adoption process itself for allowing Joe Public to participate, and slamming the Texas education state standards, which TFN opposes.
In their review, TFN bashed government and U.S. history textbooks that “suffer from an uncritical celebration of the free enterprise system.” They lamented that the “legitimate problems of capitalism” and “the government’s role in the U.S. economic system” were omitted. They targeted the Tea Party repeatedly. In one instance, they blamed constitutional conservatives for one government book espousing “anti-taxation and anti-regulation arguments.”
TFN’s never-ending left-of-left politically motivated agenda included the usual suspects — climate change science and social justice-based math, but what about the facts?
Ironically, TFN’s meme of textbook honesty has been “Those who don’t know history are destined to delete it.”
TTT’s review was equally revealing, addressing factual flaws that TFN academic sleuths overlooked or missed.
For example, in Pearson Magruder’s American Government, the pivotal role that the 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan played in the Berlin Wall being torn down was omitted. In fact, the factually documented work of Reagan, Britain’s then Prime Minister, the late Margaret Thatcher, and the Pope in the fall of the Soviet Union was non-existent.
“The Soviet Union did not have the resources to implement a ‘Star Wars’ system that Reagan supported. Others have already chronicled the role Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II played in the last great revolution of the 20th century. That it was largely a peaceful revolution in the context of decades of nuclear menace makes it all the more breathtaking,” the TTT review stated.
Sometimes facts are just facts and they have no political agenda. Case in point: In Pearson’s United States History 1877 to Present students are given an exercise to analyze a map. They are asked what can they predict about where the major battles of World War I would be fought.
Problem was “they have not yet been given any of the facts concerning any of the reasons for WWI or the countries involved,” stated Alfonsi.
Before predicting events, she said students “need to be given the facts upon which they are to base their analysis.”
In another example, Pearson presented a misleading statistic as fact, accounting for “more than 120 million who did not vote in the last presidential election.” The correct figure is 102 million. The TTT review explained that textbook writers erroneously folded into their calculation, 20 million resident aliens.
“Resident aliens are not allowed to vote in federal elections. Their voting in federal elections is a criminal offense that can result in one year in prison and deportation,” the TTT review noted.
This flub came up in McGraw Hill’s U.S. History to 1877 — three lessons on Islam were inserted into a chapter on North American development and history. TTT tagged it “irrelevant to the topic.”
Houghton Mifflin’s United States History: Early Colonial Period through Reconstruction also plunked irrelevant Islamic history into a Teacher’s Edition class exercise “designed to focus student attention on Islam,” wrote Baker and Alfonsi.
Discovery Education felt the same urge to plop the Arab world into 19th Century American history. In U.S. History: Civil War to Present, a drawing of the Arabian Coast in 1859 accompanies a drawing that describes how, with the advent of the telegraph in America, “companies rushed to put up telegraph lines all across the country and the seas.”
The American West’s cowboy was historically attributed to 8th Century North African Moors by Discovery Education. The role of the horse was credited incorrectly to the Spaniards first learning to handle horses and use them effectively as wartime tools because of the Moors. TTT noted that the Spain’s history with the horse pre-dated the Moors’ invasion.
Islamic historical intrusions appeared in other American history books. In a section about annexing the Philippines was instead a “story from the Byzantine Empire.” A Women of the West chapter linked to 10 videos on the women of Afghanistan in the “more to explore” section. Immigrant Women contained videos on Israel and the Middle East.
TTT scholars agreed that these videos were more appropriate in a World History and not US History textbook. Conversely, TFN lamented negative stereotypes of Islam in their report.
In a Houghton-Mifflin US History book, the importance of the Bill of Rights was omitted “even though events that are counter to those rights are addressed,” the review emphasized.
McGraw Hill’s American Revolution chapter in U.S. History to 1877 deleted the battles of Lexington and Concord. There was no mention of Paul Revere other than in a side reference to him as a former slave’s ride. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were the only Southern Generals acknowledged historically. Not even Braxton Bragg, namesake of Fort Bragg, was mentioned.
TTT reviewers found that McGraw Hill’s U.S. History to 1877 largely ignored the checks and balance system of American government and left out that members of the courts (judiciary) have to be nominated by the President and approved by the Senate.
Examples of PC cherry-picked information in McGraw Hill’s American Government included “executive privilege” It was presented with former president Bush invoking six privileges, “including to avoid giving Congress information on the use of FBI mob informants” while President Obama was said to have invoked the privilege by executive order only one time for “Fast and Furious.” Reviewers noted biased diction that made Bush’s actions appear nefarious while Obama’s noble. President Clinton’s 14 executive privileges were not mentioned.
Partial truths ran rampant, according to the TTT review. Houghton Mifflin told half of the story of DDT, the insecticide, exposing the negative effects but none of the positive, primarily in curtailing malaria outbreaks in Africa.
TTT noted that Hispanic-rights groups La Unida Raza (La Raza) and MEChA were depicted only in a positive light, omitting Reconquista calls to overthrow the U.S. government. This radical ideology was the reason Tucson Unified School District shut down and banned its Mexican-American Studies program in Arizona.
In other textbooks, pro-lifers were depicted as aggressive “abortion foes” while pro-abortion demonstrators were portrayed as peaceful. Hezbollah was never mentioned as an Islamic terrorist organizations but again, the Tea Party was called out as “militant, radical and fascist.”
Another textbook stated that the U.S. has a “national government,” which TTT reviewers cited as factually incorrect. “The U.S. Constitution created a ‘federal’ government of nation-states that grant a federal system limited powers,” they stated. “Limited powers” of the federal government was omitted. Worldview’s American History left out America’s founding fathers.
Right now, publishers are responding to these textbook reviews and SBOE recommendations. White hopes that after reading TTT’s findings, concerned Texans will attend the final textbook adoption meetings. Public comments are encouraged at the meeting on Tuesday, November 18, at 1 PM in Austin. The SBOE votes on the Social Studies books on Friday, November 21.
When CSCOPE hit the news, most of the attention was focused on the lessons.
Much less attention was paid to the money side of CSCOPE.
But there were so many questionable practices from contracting to accounting, that the Texas State Auditor was
asked to get involved.
The Auditor’s report stated that the ESCs had such poor accounting practices that:
“auditors were not able to fully answer the audit objective to determine the amount of revenue and expenditures
related to the development, installation, distribution, and marketing of CSCOPE.”
The ESCs collected $73.9 million for CSCOPE, but they couldn’t account for over $6 million of public funds.
No one involved suffered any consequences. They are all still on the public payroll because, according to the Auditors report:
“the education service centers do not have specific contract laws that they must follow “
“there were no specific state funds appropriated for the development, implementation, and operation of CSCOPE.”
And even though the CSCOPE contracts “lacked fundamental provisions to help protect the State’s and taxpayers’ interests,” none of it was illegal because
What I found, from the standpoint of financial accountability, is another “CSCOPE.”
But this time, instead of just having poor contracting and accounting procedures with public funds, I have a video of a government entity explaining how they defied the Legislature and by-passed Texas law in order to operate TxVSN, and their elected officials rationalizing their actions.
I don’t have enough room to print everything, so I have chosen a few highlights of my findings to share here.
The Texas Legislature passed SB 1788 in 2007 establishing the Texas Virtual School Network (TxVSN) and funding the
operations with state funds.
The Commissioner of Education was given authority over the network resources and instructed in statute to contract with an
ESC for“the ESC to operate the network.”
The Legislature chose ESCs to operate the network because one of their statutory purposes is to “implement initiatives
assigned by the legislature.” (8.220)
Texas Education Agency (TEA) issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) entitled “Central Operations for the Texas Virtual School Network” with the deadline for submission 3/5/08. Eligible proposers were limited to the 20 Texas ESCs.
The purpose was to “identify the regional service center to operate the network.” The RFP stated, “a collaborative of ESCs will also be considered.”
The RFP included other qualifications such as HUB percentages, an understanding of
TxVSN, etc. as well as a statement that the proposer had not
“communicated directly or indirectly the proposal or bid made to any competitor or any
other person engaged in such line of business during the procurement process for this
contract.”
According to discussions held in a public meeting on 2/26/13, The Harris County Department of Education (HCDE) wanted
to bid for Central Operations of TxVSN, but was excluded by the mandates of the legislation because they are not an ESC.
Excerpts from HCDE’s public discussion concerning TxVSN:
(Note: Translation is approximate because some is difficult to understand. Please watch video for exact wording.)
John Sawyer (HCDE Superintendent): “… we wanted to bid on the contract. So I negotiated with (ESC)Region 10 who said, “We don’t know how to do it.” And I said, “We do. But we can’t bid.” So they bid and we are doing about 70% of the infrastructure work. And they are the front of the Texas School. And they handle the money and the student registrations and all that. ..“
John Sawyer (HCDE Superintendent):“…When the law was passed the wording in the law said that the only people who could bid were Regional Service Centers…We don’t qualify as a Regional Service Center. I never could decide if that was purposeful or accidental, but it didn’t matter. We got our share of the business anyway…”
Kay Smith (HCDE Trustee):“I have a question just for clarification. We could not bid on this directly?”
Sawyer: “That is correct”
Smith: “So they bid on it and then they sub it out to us?”
Sawyer:“The director at Region 10 is a former school superintendent that I happen to know pretty well… When I realized that we were not going to be allowed to bid on the project, and the bid was due in Austin on Tuesday of (the) next week…I called Buddy and said, “OK. Here is the deal.” I told you that conversation. He said, “John, we don’t know how to do this.” I said, “We do. But we can’t bid.” So we sent a team to Dallas…And spent the weekend. Wrote the proposal. We delivered it to TEA on Tuesday. Jointly. I mean we helped them with the proposal. And they got awarded the contract and we get about 70% …”
(Note: After the discussion, only one Trustee, Kay Smith, voted not to approve the contract.)
Three weeks before the final proposal for Central Operations of TxVSN was due, TEA held a conference in Austin “to assist potential proposers in clarifying their understanding of the scope and nature of the work…” It was open to “all potential proposers.”
Records show exactly who attended:
ESC-11 sent 3 people
ESC- 4 sent 1 person
ESC-12 sent 1 person HCDE – not qualified to bid – sent 6 people
ESC 10 – DID NOT ATTEND
Yet, TEA awarded the contract to operate the Texas statewide on-line school to ESC-10, an ESC that:
did not even attend TEA’s proposers conference, and
John Sawyer claims said, “We don’t know how to do it.”
(Note: I requested to view the winning bid from ESC-10, but TEA asked for a ruling from the Texas Attorney General Open Records Division – brings back more memories of CSCOPE.)
Esc-10’s first TxVSN contract period was 4/10/2008 through 8/31/2008 for $750,000.
ESC 10 immediately subcontracted with HCDE
(NOT an ESC and NOT an HUB) to provide 74.5% of the work for $559,138.
The first sub-contract with HCDE covered the same dates, 4/10/2008 through 8/31/2008.But records show the work began months before the contract was formally signed. HCDE’s Board didn’t even vote to approve the contract until 2 WEEKS BEFORE IT ENDED.
4/10/08 – Sub-contract began
7/15/08 – HCDE’s expenditure sheet for $325,997.98
7/24/08 – ESC-10 signed sub-contract
7/28/08 – ESC-10 received $325,997.98 HCDE invoice
(Note: I did not find records showing the date HCDE signed the contract.)This sub-contract has been renewed or extended every year with the same discrepancies repeating themselves.During HCDE’s February 2013 Board meeting, HCDE Trustee Erica Lee Carter asks this question about their 12/13 TxVSN contract:“Why are we voting on a contract thatstarted last September?”
But dates and signatures are only part of the contracting concerns.
Documents show that ESC-10 did not request bids before it sub-contracted the development of TxVSN Central Operations
to HCDE.
Instead, ESC-10 claimed, “No bid required since professional services.”
But this was a TEA contract which had to follow State of Texas contract guidelines. Texas Government Code 2254 defines “profession services” as services within the scope of the following professions:
accounting
architecture
landscape architecture
land surveying
medicine
optometry
professional engineering
real estate appraising
professional nursing
Technology is not listed.
Appendix 1 of the TEA contract reads:
“No funds shall be used to pay for food costs (ie refreshments, banquets, group meals, etc.) unless requested as a specific line item in the budget by the contractor and approved (prior to expenditures occurring) by TEA.”
I did not find budget line items or TEA prior approval documentation, but I did find the following purchases in the HCDE check registry under TxVSN budget codes:
Statute dictates that an ESC will operate the network and TEA awarded ESC 10 the Central Operations contract.
But I found multiple contradictory statements as to who is actually “operating” the network:
The TEA website claims: “ESC Region 10 serves as central operations for the TXVSN” and “oversees the day to day operations of the network”
The ESC 10 website claims: “ESC Region 10, in collaboration with the Harris County Department of Education, has been awarded Central Operations of the TxVSN”
The TXVSN website claims: “ESC Region 10, in collaboration with the Harris County Department of Education, is Central Operations.”
The HCDE website claims:“Harris County Department of Education, in collaboration with the Education Service Center (ESC) 10, has been awarded central operations of the TxVSN.”
“Harris County Department of Education was awarded Central Operations of the TxVSN.”
Since TxVSN is online school for thousands of students across Texas, I decided to see who is really operating the network by checking who registered and owns “txvsn.org.”
The result? HCDE I checked the form participating school districts need to send to TxVSN Central Operations for the mailing address.
Whose address is it? HCDE
If you call the TxVSN Central Operations Help Desk…
Where is the phone answered?
HCDE
Then I looked at the original “Scope of Work” descriptions spelled out in ESC-10’s sub-contract with HCDE, it is obvious who is actually “operating” the TxVSN.
TEA / ESC -10
HCDE
But there are two major issues with HCDE operating the TxVSN. First – State statue dictates that an ESC will operate TxVSN. HCDE is NOT an ESC. (30A.052) Second – Documents show the name “HCDE” is actually an “aka” of the “County School Trustees of Harris County.”
Why would a government entity go down to the county courthouse and file documents in order to conduct business under an assumed name?
Well, HCDE is actually an old county school board leftover from the days when counties still ran the public schools (1889 to mid-1900s) – before Texas instituted our current ISD system. They still exist in Harris County because of a loophole in the law which allows them to remain in operation under old, repealed county school statutes.(11.301)
“After December 31, 1978, no state funds shall be used to support … a board of county school trustees…”
TxVSN central operations is funded with state dollars.(30A.152)
Would someone question a contract using state funds being issued to “County School Trustees of Harris County?”
They might.
Would someone question a contract using state funds being issued to “HCDE?”
Much less likely.
Just as with CSCOPE, I end up asking a whole series of questions….
When it comes to Texas education dollars, who is watching the store?
Do the ESCs and other government business enterprises like HCDE really operate unchecked?
Do the Commissioner of Education, TEA and the Legislature really not know what is going on – or are they part of the problem?
Could the answers to all of these questions be something as simple as… … follow the money? Is it just a coincidence that less than a year after leaving TEA, Robert Scott, the Commissioner of Education from 2007-2012, became a paid “consultant” for HCDE?
(Note: Notice this first payment from HCDE to Rob Eissler was 12/21/12 – while he was still officially the Chairman of the House Public Education Committee??? )
Is it also just a coincidence that emails show when HCDE’s Superintendent warned Rob Eissler this past May that his lobbying group’s $269,500 HCDE “consulting” contract may be in jeopardy, Eissler called a current member of the Texas House Public Education Committee,Rep. Dan Huberty, who then called HCDE Board President, Angie Chesnut, and the contract remained intact?
I am sure, just like the HCDE name change, they are all just remarkable coincidences.
With CSCOPE, the ESCs got off scott free because the Legislature left so many loopholes in the statute governing them.
But with TxVSN, the Legislature dictated the funding and the operations in statute so I have personally asked the State Auditor’s Office to investigate the contracting of the TxVSN.
If you agree, you may contact the State Auditor’s Office and urge them to investigate Texas Education Agency’s TxVSN contracting with ESC-10 and HCDE @ 512-936-9500 or email.
You may contact the Texas Senate Education Committee and urge them to request a state audit of TxVSN contracting @ 512-463-0355 or email
You may contact the Texas House Public Education Committee and urge them to request a state audit of TxVSN contracting @ 512-463-0804 or email
Texas Associati0n of School Administrators (TASA) along with Texas School Districts and Texas Education Service Centers (ESC’s) are implementing what they would call a “Necessary Revolution” a plan to Transform Texas Education. TASA’s “Creating a New Vision” for public education has been working within Texas School districts by implementing a “Marxist” constructivist philosophy of teaching called “Student Centered Learning” or “Project Based Learning”. Teachers and Students hate it. Unfortunately, teachers are silenced out of fear of losing their jobs.
District Superintendents that have signed onto this TRANSFORMATION are called Future Ready Superintendents. Has your district signed on.. check HERE. This transformation is not only hurtful to students and teacher morale but it cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.
TASA has sought the help of Shannon Buerk and her company “Engage2Learn” to help implement this “new revolution”. School districts will contract with Engage2Learn and have them hold a community “consensus” meetings. They already have their agenda and plan in place and want the community to have the impression that their input is needed. With the use of the DELPHI TECHNIQUE public input is controlled. These meeting are a waste of time and taxpayers money. Learn how to diffuse the Delphi Technique here.
Now who runs Engage2Learn. Husband and wife team Shannon & Clark Buerk. Shannon worked for Coppell ISD and worked with Keith Sockwell @ Cambridge Strategic Services. More on Mr. Sockwell HERE.
Shannon’s goal is to transform Texas Education to a progressive/liberal one with Project Based Learning (PBL). PBL implement a collaborative learning style where absolute truth and American Exceptionalism isn’t taught. Students work on computer and in collective groups.
IFD, and of course
By Bill Ames
indoctrinate students with the tired, radical environmentalist view that promotes the leftist ideology that fossil fuels are evil.
and the environment.
only surpass Middle East and Russian production, but to create domestic reserves for the foreseeable future.
grade World War II lesson (CSCOPE is Texas’ educators first step towards common core) reveals undue classroom attention to social engineering subjects such as the Navajo Code talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, and the Japanese internment.
TASA and local “visioning” initiatives.
Bill Ames is an education activist who lives in Dallas. His book, Texas Trounces the Left’s war on History (WNAenterprises.com) tells the story of his experience in developing Texas’ U. S. history standard in 2009-2010. He is currently reviewing CSCOPE lessons as part of the State Board of Education’s ad hoc committee project, and is available to deliver presentations to interested groups. He welcomes reader comments at 
Victor Skinner,
