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Common Core: Phasing Western Culture out of Education

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by Mary Graber

Frontpage Magazine

    classroomThis week, left-wing outlets, like NPR’s quiz show, Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!and the Huffington Post, as well as the British Telegraph, expressed surprise and concern that the new national Common Core standards will destroy the love of literature.  The leftist outlets focused on favorites like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, but couldn’t seem to connect this unconstitutional federalization of education with their favorite presidential candidate.

They should also be concerned about what the recently released test questions reveal about what the feds want: happy workers for the State.

The test questions, which will eventually be given to every single student, are the kind you could expect from a close pal of Bill Ayers, co-founder of the terrorist group Weatherman-turned-“Distinguished Professor of Education.” Ayers’s close colleague, Stanford Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, education director of Obama’s presidential transition team, heads content specifications for testing under one of the consortia, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium which received $176 million in stimulus funds to develop testing under Common Core—now the law of the land, at least in 46 states. (The rest of the $360 million for testing was given to PARCC, Partnership for Assessment Readiness for College and Career.)

SBAC recently released 16 sample test questions.  They reveal that the “transformation” of American education that Darling-Hammond had eagerly anticipated will be fulfilled—toward making students into global citizens, devoid of a sense of cultural heritage, and content with performing quick tasks that require little concentration.

Common Core was sold as delivering more academic rigor, on a more consistent state-to-state basis.  But one of its most controversial aspects for the English/Language Arts portion (the other being math) was the replacement of literary works with “informational texts.” Students are to divide their time equally between literature and informational texts, until high school, when literary works will make up only 30 percent of English/Language Arts instruction.

The recently released sample test questions do indeed test for students’ ability to search out information from both written and audio/video “texts,” and provide short written responses to them, as well as, occasionally, correct punctuation.

The Common Core website attempts to assure us that “the Standards require a certain critical content for all students including classic myths and stories from around the world, America’s Founding Documents, foundational American literature, and Shakespeare.” Yet, at the same time, “they intentionally do not offer a reading list.”  We know, however, that if students are to be tested on reading and writing skills, some content will be necessary.  The content presented in the sample test questions is telling.  None of it is from the “classic myths and stories,” etc., cited above.

Common Core proponents repeatedly refer to the changed “twenty-first century workplace.”  Accordingly, tests are administered by computer and incorporate videos.  Two of the samples ask students to answer questions after watching short videos about weightlessness in space.  Such testing is in line with the increased emphasis on “listening and discussion skills” that I noted in my report for Accuracy in Media.  In Common Core-aligned lessons, high school juniors and seniors were tasked with looking at, and then discussing, photographs and videos.

The trend of late has been to emphasize such “alternative literacies,” but Common Core codifies what are really preliterate skills.

Even the written texts and analytical tasks seem to test only for rudimentary skills: the ability to read a short, simple passage and then pull out the correct information.  Three of the sample questions involve searching out answers and definitions in a simple narrative titled “Grandma Ruth.”

Another question asks the students to provide an ending to a story that consists of two short paragraphs about a character named Jeff and his dog walking by a lake, when a splash is heard.

The question remains: how would the response be graded?  For absence of grammatical errors?  Or according to Darling-Hammond’s criteria spelled out in her 2009 Harvard Educational Review article of “developing creativity, critical thinking skills, and the capacity to innovate”?  She did indicate that new assessments would use “multiple measures of learning and performance.” We can expect some—ahem–“discretion” in grading.

The intent of Common Core is to ensure every student of “college and career readiness.” Are such questions intended to meet the top goal of Darling-Hammond and the Department of Education—that is to “close the achievement gap”?  One suspects so.

The next question too asks the student to complete a writing assignment–arguing for a longer school day.  This time the student is given a schedule of activities.  The assignment is to “revise the paragraph by adding details from the daily schedule that help support the reasons for having a longer school day.” Presumably, this tests for the ability to provide “relevant evidence.”

Coincidentally, the idea of public schools being “centers of community life” with longer days has been something that the Obama administration has been promoting with daily announcements about “cradle to career” initiatives and efforts to “engage” various “communities.” While he was still head of Chicago schools, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made schools community centers, offering three meals a day, and even eye exams and eyeglasses.  Now he wants to expand the role of schools on a nationwide basis. In Duncan’s vision, schools would be open 12 to 13 hours a day, 7 days a week; they would “meet the social and emotional needs” of students, and provide cultural and academic activities, as well as services for parents, like GED tutoring and healthcare clinics.  To Duncan, such efforts are part of a “battle for social justice.”

So is it a coincidence that one of the test questions concerns a longer school day?

Notice the student is not asked if the school day should be longer. Textbooks, similarly, now ask students to write papers on how “you personally might respond to [President Obama’s] call to remake this world.” The popular Norton Reader does exactly this in one of the topic questions that follows Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech in its pages.

Next in the sample test is a reading passage titled “Planes on the Brain,” by free-lance writer Elisabeth Deffner in a children’s magazine called Faces,published by Carus Publishing, which was acquired by ePals Corporation in 2011.

ePals, which is working with Microsoft, Dell, and IBM, encourages “global collaboration.” One of its “Rich, Multi-Disciplinary Student-Centric Learning Centers” is called Global Citizens. Its website says, “Microsoft and ePals are working together to offer schools and districts interoperable products and tools for building educational communities, delivering high quality content and facilitating collaboration.” The Bill Gates company, Microsoft, is the vehicle of delivery for content.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private funder of Common Core.  To get schools “tech ready” for the online national testing, the Gates Foundation-supported Education Week provides helpful tips and reminders and an encouraging blog post.  Not surprisingly, a test question comes from an article published in an online magazine that partners with Microsoft.

These are close collaborators indeed, for the “Our Approach” page of ePals could have been written by Darling-Hammond herself:

Authentic ePals projects are centered around meaningful content and experiences that require teamwork, digital literacy skills, higher-level thinking and communication. By engaging in authentic learning experiences about relevant issues, students, teachers and mentors learn and work together, strengthening core learning while motivating learners and building self-confidence and skills necessary for future careers.

ePals, also, we are told, helps teachers learn “to use technology effectively in their classrooms, by providing professional development, curriculum, contests and other resources.”  The “Transforming Volunteering” promotional video features a quotation by—surprise–President Obama about “shaping the future.”

In 2010, ePals received broadband stimulus funds and won the contract for New York City.  Partners listed on the video include the World Bank, National Geographic (which just announced a line of Common Core-aligned reading materials), and the Washington Post.  ePals is also partnering with Teaching Matters, which describes itself as “a non-profit organization that partners with educators to ensure that all students can succeed in the digital age.”

Teaching Matters, on October 18, 2011, honored Darling-Hammond as a “Champion of Education and Innovation.” The press release referred to Darling-Hammond as “an authority on school reform, educational equity and teacher quality,” and noted that in 2007, Education Week (the Gates-supported Common Core advocacy newsletter) “named her one of the 10 most influential people in the field of education over the last decade.”

The “Champion of Education and Innovation” promises to influence further with such test questions:

• How was the Tuskegee Airmen program a positive influence? (along with a “highlighting” exercise)  (Nothing wrong with learning about the Tuskegee Airmen—except when such examples are used in isolation to indict the U.S. as a racist/imperialist nation.)

• A writing assignment concerning the use of cell phones in schools with reasons for and against presented in bullet points (must be one of those “relevant” topics).

• A passage, “Diamonds in the Sky,” about astronomy with two multiple choice questions and a short writing response regarding how scientists can use the knowledge to make diamonds.

• A passage about the invasion of kudzu that asks the student to eliminate unnecessary sentences.

• Grammatical corrections to a student essay about watching a hockey game.

There are no references to the “classic myths and stories” or “America’s Founding Documents” that bureaucrats promised.

Are these examples of the “higher order thinking” and “more thoughtful assessments”  that Darling-Hammond touted in her post-award interview by Teaching Matters Executive Director Lynne Guastaferro?

Apparently “twenty-first century skills” and “higher order thinking” don’t call for lengthy works of literature, like Shakespeare’s plays, Little House on the Prairie, or even favorite novels of liberals.  More likely, students will be given a short passage and asked how a sod house affects the ecosystem.  The wallpaper for the Teaching Matters website features a bulletin board with projects on biodiversity.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is advancing the use of their materials regarding environmental regulations for Common Core. California’s Invasive Plant Inventory is on the recommended informational reading list, as is EPA Executive Order 13423.

Do “twenty-first century”  students no longer need to read poems by John Donne about love so strong that separations are like “like gold to aery thinness beat”?  Or do they need to learn how to make diamonds?  Are we really going to inspire the next great American novelist by asking him to insert a few sentences on a computer screen about what happens when a splash is heard?

For sure, for decades now, educators have been moving in the direction of Common Core, with the replacement of classic imaginative works by texts that address “relevant” leftist political issues.  Since at least the 1980s those like E.D. Hirsch have been decrying the loss of cultural cohesion through an unraveling curriculum and lowering of standards.

Many gave up on the public school system and sent their children to private schools or home-schooled them.  But critics warn that national tests will make these curricula moot.  They are right.  Education Week recently reported that already many Catholic and other private schools are jumping ahead and adopting Common Core in preparation for college-entrance exams that will line up with Common Core criteria.

Literary works promote an American cultural identity, pass on Western Judeo-Christian values, inspire independent thought, and develop the imagination.  Their elimination is likely to produce citizens incapable of understanding the proper–and limited–role of the state.  It’s too bad that the liberal lovers of literature failed to see the dictatorial move of a president through the Department of Education in his first term. Now they whine about students not reading To Kill a Mockingbird. They themselves need to read Dr. Zhivago.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

 

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CSCOPE & George Soros &Project Based Learning (PBL)

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Texas Education Service Center 6 recently held their summer CSCOPE conference and advertised it with the slogan “CATCH the CSOPE WAVE”.  I don’t know about you but I have had enough of the progressive CSCOPE WAVE paid for with our tax dollars, it needs to flow right out of the STATE. ESC 6 and school districts that have purchased and implemented CSCOPE are all about implementing a progressive learning style called “Project Based Learning” (PBL).The photos below are from ESC 6’s Facebook Page. They are now coming out publicly with stating CSCOPE is about PBL.

 

         Photo

 

The National Education Association and Texas Education Service Center 6 are linked to a progressive organization called Buck Institute of Education (BIE). Drummond Pike, president of The Tides Foundation is a former board member of BIE. If you are not aware of the progressive/liberal nature of The Tides Foundation and it’s association with George Soros, check out this article in Discover the Networks.  The photo below is from ESC 6  spotlighting CSCOPE’S link to PBL.

 

 

Name that project

BIE is also associated with Humanist Linda Darling Hammond. Hammond is associated with radical communist Bill Ayers. 

stanford

Parents and taxpayers, please get involved as to why your tax dollars are supporting and leading to the decline of Texas Students. For those that are not familiar with PBL the chart below highlights the difference in a traditional education and PBL and why you need to concerned.PBL COMPARISON

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CSCOPE FOR BABIES & DATA MINING

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CSCOPE-for-Babies[5]

       “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” ~Lenin 

Texas Trash Talk
by Colleen Vera

Many thought that when TESCCC promised to remove lesson plans from CSCOPE the children of Texas were safe – for now.

The plan by the liberals to bypass our Governor and State Board of Education  in order to slip Federal Common Core Standards into Texas schools through the backdoor – secretly using public funds hidden within a private non-profit corporation – had been uncovered, investigated and thwarted.

For the time being, Texas kids were safe from Bill Ayers and Linda Darling Hammond. Lessons designed to brainwash Texas kids against Capitalism, American Exceptionalism,  Christianity, etc. were gone.  Texas teachers were no longer forced to teach all kids the same CSCOPE lessons on the same day in the exact same way.

All was well. Right?

I am sorry to report that a more sinister web is now being quickly spun as you read. A plan that includes:

 

  • Implementing Obama’s new pre-K plan to
  • Use local Harris County tax dollars to fund a
  • Private non-profit corporation to
  • Grab Harris County kids from birth to 4
  • Including HOME VISITS…. then
  • Gradually expand statewide until the
  • State has control of all day care programs
  • Under Federal pre-school Common Core standards.

Thus leading to the ultimate utopia for liberals – government control of child rearing – hidden behind the guise of “kindergarten readiness.”

This is all being planned secretly behind closed doors at the Harris County Department of Education.(HCDE)

What makes it worse is that the HCDE  Board President, Angie Chesnut143-Chestnut_09.jpg  is supposed to be a Republican. She even serves as Vice President  of the Kingwood Area Republican Women – who list CSCOPE as a “hot topic” on their website.

Yet Ms Chesnut is allowing each board member to meet privately with the team planning Obama’s Pre-K Common Core program so they can gain information and ask questions WITHOUT having to discuss the plan in front of the public in an open meeting.

I guess she has never read the “Republican Philosophy” document nor the “Republican vs Democrat” beliefs page posted by her own club.

More troubling is that at the HCDE meeting to  replace a resigning board member, Ms. Chesnut threw out board policy, introduced a new Democrat to the list of board candidates, and proceeded to vote with the Democrats to approve the new candidate –  thus guaranteeing a Democrat majority – and the passage of Obama’s Pre-K Common Core plan.

But thanks to the one true Republican on the HCDE Board, Kay Smith, the public is no longer being kept in the dark about the plan. She shared it with me so I could share it with Texas.

I have scanned the documents outlining the program and posted them below:

angie 18 angie 20

Some will say I can’t call this “CSCOPE for Babies” because a computer product is not being sold. But the  similarities of this plan to CSCOPE are too remarkable to be a coincidence.

Three examples from their business models are:

  • Just as CSCOPE uses public funds to run a private non-profit corporation to hide its operations from the public, HCDE plans to more than double its tax rate to raise $24-30 million per year and GIVE IT via contract to a start-up non-profit to be called “Harris County School Readiness Corporation (HCSRC)” to operate the program.
  • Just as CSCOPE started as a simple service to local school districts and spread to over 800 districts statewide with plans of expanding out of state, HCSRC plans to start in Harris County with “on-line resources, parenting classes and in-home visitations” and grow to create “ a single state entity” to “GOVERN ALL early childhood education functions.”
  • Just as the legality of CSCOPE’s actions were suspect, the legality of Harris County School Trustees collecting the Equalization Tax to give to a private non-profit corporation instead of distributing the funds directly to the ISDs  as dictated by Texas Education Code 18.14, is highly questionable.

But the most remarkable similarities are in the people connected to this program.

James J Heckman from the University of Chicagowho was an advisor to President Obama’s 2008 campaign, provides the evaluation claiming this program will “strengthen Texas’s economy.”

The link in his material to www.all4ed.org  shows the organization to be theAlliance for Excellent Education who just happens to have Linda Darling Hammond (of CSCOPE fame) on their board. Like Heckman, Hammond served as President Obama’s education advisor during his 2008 campaign.

chesnut 11

Even though her own charter school at Stanford failed academically, Bill Ayres thought so highly of Ms. Hammond that he posted a petition on MoveOn.org to have her named as Secretary of Education.

angie16

Some other  Alliance Board members of interest are:

  • Vijay Ravindran who was the chief technology officer of Catalist LLC—a  political technology company started with $1 million from George Soros that built a national progressive voter database of  more than 260 million people. During the 2008 election, Catalist worked with ninety progressive organizations, including Planned Parenthood, SEIU,  and the Obama presidential campaign, to name a few.
  • Daniel Leeds is founder and chair of Education Voters of America,the Education Funders Strategy Group, and the Alliance for Excellent Education, for which he serves as chair of its governing board. Mr. Leeds is also president of Fulcrum Investments LLC.

The Alliance was a founding partner in the Data Quality Campaign to develop education data systems in every state to “improve student achievement.”CSCOPE is a data mining program.

The Alliance partners with Learning Forward to provide standards training.

Learning Forward published one of Hammonds reports for SCOPE –Stanford Center for Opportunity in Education.

ESCs link to the Alliance and to Learning Forward on their websites.

Presenting for Learning Forward Texas in June and July is Ervin Knezek  (ofCSCOPE fame –) who now owns his own company called lead4ward.  Currently working for him are:

angie 12

Note: As a retired teacher I find it odd that Learning Forward Texas, an organization that specializes in training educators, has no training programs listed on their calendar for the entire summer – the busiest season for teacher workshops.

The brochure produced to promote this new program in Harris County lists the board members of the Texas Gulf Coast School Readiness Committee on the last page.

The Chair of the committee, Stephen M Kaufman, is the Managing Director ofFulcrum Investments LLC  whose President just happens to be the founder and chair of the Alliance for Excellent Education, Education Voters of America and the Education Funders Strategy Group.

Corporation wiki lists Mr. Kaufman as the President of the Rauch Foundationwhich focuses on similar education issues on Long Island, NY. The small program there appears to be the model for what they want to do in Texas.

And what a coincidence that it is all right in step with President Obama’s newPre-K Initiative.

angie 14

This includes  national standards for preschool – thus the phrase “Common Core for Babies.” Then there is the plan to grow this Harris County program into a statewide government entity. A look at Colorado shows us what we have to look forward to if we allow this to move forward.

“Legislators in Colorado …  passed an additional 96 pages of regulations in attempt to reduce regulations for preschools. These new laws banned whole milk for preschoolers, require a certain percentage of “ethnic dolls” in dollhouses, and mandates state reports of how many crayons per child the daycare provider offers. And preschools like Montessori have to get state board approvals to operate in Colorado if they use wooden stools or puzzles, because these are just too much of a safety risk.”                                                          Karin Piper

But I think the scariest part of this plan is the Home Visitation Programwhich provides regular home visits to families from pregnancy through the child’s second birthday, ”intended to promote good health and parenting practices.”

It is bad enough when the bureaucrats over-regulate schools and businesses, but when they have the right to enter your home and regulate how you care for yourself and your children, they have crossed the line.

This program may not be a computer only product, but it is a control mechanism and data mining process just like CSCOPE.

It is the Federal government trying to sneak in the back door just as they tried with CSCOPE, but this time they have come for our babies.

We are kicking them out of our ISDs and now we need to make sure we keep them out of our pre-schools and our homes.

What you can do?

Because Angie Chesnut sold out the HCDE Board to the Democrats, contacting HCDE is a waste of time.

This will need to be stopped in Austin.

You can contact:

  • Senator Patrick, Chair of the Senate Education Committee

    (512) 463-0107 … email

  • Rep. Aycock, Chair of the House Education Committee

   (512) 463-0684 … email

Ask them to investigate the Harris County Department of Education (HCDE) and stop their plan to bring the federal pre-k “Common Core for babies” program in the back door by funding a private non-profit corporation with equalization tax dollars.

Note: For those who don’t know what HCDE is, it is the assumed name of the Harris County School Trustees.  Years ago, county boards ran public schools in Texas. When Texas moved to ISDs, every county but two, Harris and Dallas, closed their county boards when they no longer had schools to run.

Harris County still elects County School Trustees who  still have the authority to collect a countywide education property tax (called the equalization tax) almost 50 years after all students in Harris County moved out of the countywide school system and into ISDs. It is the only school board in Texas elected by Party.  You can read more here.

Colleen Vera
colleen@TexasTrashTalk.com

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As you know, Linda Darlng-Hammond is tied to Columbia Teachers’ College. Yes, the data mining that will be utilized if HB 2103 is signed into law right here in Texas is enough to make any person scared, and the national database under Common Core Standards is a similar entity.  All the data from 20 years back that is contained in PEIMS, in the TEA, in the Texas Higher Education Commission, and in the Texas Workforce Commission will be subject to sharing with government and private entities even  outside Texas. From this data, the Obama administration will be able to screen out people who have a freckle on their left earlobe! – Donna Garner

 

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CSCOPE: HOW DID TEXAS GET IT HERE?

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cscope in the making

 

CSCOPE: HOW DID TEXAS GET IT HERE?

By Danette Clark

In 1992, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) entered into a partnership with Texas Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and Austin Interfaith to direct funds to low-performing schools for use in teacher training, parent leadership training, and after-school enrichment. From this partnership, several IAF ‘Alliance Schools’ were created.

Texas IAF is part of the Saul Alinsky-founded and Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation. Saul Alinsky is the Marx-loving, God-hating community organizer known for his influence on President Obama and ACORN.

According to a 2009 study by the Annenberg Institute, Texas IAF’s Alliance Schools network grew to ”roughly a quarter of the Austin Independent School District’s elementary schools and half of the district’s high-poverty schools” in an eight-year period.

 

The study also reveals that Texas IAF and Austin Interfaith developed a collaborative relationship with former Austin ISD Superintendent, Pascal Forgione.

The Alliance Schools model can now be found in approximately 160 schools throughout the state – a speck on the map when compared to the number of Texas schools infected by the Coalition of Essential Schools.

As I wrote in Unravelled! The 30 Year Agenda Behind Common Core, the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is the radical reform movement behind both CSCOPE and Common Core.

 

CES, which is modeled after secularist reformers like John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Paulo Freire, and George Counts, functions as a communist-style education movement with the stated intent of ‘educating for a more democratic and just society’.

Westbury High School in Houston and R.L. Paschal High School in Fort Worth are two of the original twelve schools that were established (or ‘redesigned’) by Theodore Sizer in 1984 to become CES member schools.

 

According to StateUniversity.com, the R.L. Paschal Essential School, which is a small autonomous unit embedded within the larger Paschal High School, survived and flourished by “keeping a very low profile“.

 

The largest expansion of CES progressive reform in Texas came years later by way of the Houston Annenberg Challenge.

In 1993, then President Bill Clinton announced that Ambassador Walter Annenberg would donate 500 million dollars to improving public schools in America. It was this 500 million, plus matching grants from private sources, that aided in the nationwide expansion of Theodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools.

Through the Annenberg grant, communist and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers created the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, wherein he and Barack Obama served on the board to further expand CES schools in the State of Illinois.

Both Ayers and President Obama have continued to this day to do their respective parts to promote and expanded CES schools nationwide. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop still aids schools and districts across the country in implementing progressive reform through smaller learning community grants and funding from sources like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Brown University, and the Annenberg Institute.

In addition to the well known Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Walter  Annenberg’s ‘Challenge to the Nation‘ also provided for the expansion of progressive reform to Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay area, South Florida, and Houston.

 

In Houston, it was the Brown Foundation, Houston Endowment Incorporated, and several corporate and business leaders who collaborated to apply for a piece of the challenge grant money being offered by Annenberg.

Delia Quintanilla served as the first director of the Houston Annenberg Challenge (HAC). Six local universities were called on to provide support to the HAC by providing university staff, faculty, and students to interact with districts and aid in implementing reform.

The Annenberg Institute kicked off the HAC by choosing eleven ‘Beacon Schools’ to “‘light the way‘ to quality school reform for other funded schools”.

According to Chester Finn, Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the  Beacon Schools chosen appeared to have been ’cherry picked’. Finn reported that the eleven schools chosen by Annenberg were doing better than the Houston average when they entered the program and were performing at about the same level three years later. Therefore, although it may have appeared to outsiders that the first few years of reform in those eleven schools was effective, as Finn stated, he could “scarcely tell what was caused by Annenberg and what may have been shaped by other influences”.

 

In 1995, Humble Independent School District opened Quest Early College High School. Quest is an Annenberg Challenge Grant Beacon School, a First Amendment School and a Coalition of Essential Schools Mentor School.

 

CES mentor schools act as a model of reform for others schools, offering school study tours, advocacy training, legislative action sessions, and professional development opportunities.

A Houston Annenberg Challenge 2 year summary report revealed that by 2001, approximately 100 metropolitan schools had already introduced Critical Friends groups on their campuses and the HAC had trained 300 coaches in both Annenberg-funded and non-Annenberg-funded schools.

 

The report further revealed that promising teachers and curriculum trainers were identified through group collaborations. Specifically:

“Teachers from Annenberg schools collaborate actively in Critical Friends Groups, Literature Study Circles, Professional Academies, Teacher Writing Groups, and Teacher Action Research Teams. From these activities expert teachers emerge as peer leaders in roles such as Critical Friends Group Coaches, Content Specialists, and Reading Learning Facilitators. Furthermore, a number of teachers have become certified as curriculum trainers in national programs including the Coalition of Essential Schools and the New Jersey Writing Project.”

Just as educators were identified and chosen through these collaborative efforts, some were also identified as not worthy to continue their involvement in the progressive reform process.

According to an article printed by the Houston Press in 1998, director Delia Quintanilla was dismissed a little more than a year after the Houston Annenberg Challenge got off the ground, and a troubleshooting team from the Annenberg Institute was being sent to Houston to “evaluate and audit the effectiveness of the local administration of the grant”.

 

Annenberg Challenge National Coordinator, Barbara Cervone, expressed “serious concerns about the leadership, coherence and pace of the Annenberg effort in Houston”.

Despite tensions between proponents of CES’s radical reform methods, HAC pressed on with strict oversight and instruction from the Annenberg Institute and further donations from ‘philanthropic’ organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation.

Annenberg established the New Visions in Leadership Academy to train like-minded radicals for placement as principles into Texas Annenberg/CES schools. According to this job posting, “more than 300 seated school leaders from Houston-area K-12 districts” graduated from New Visions in the first 10 years.

 

In 2002, Humble ISD passed a $230,000,000 bond measure to build Atascocita and Kingwood Park High Schools and redesign existing elementary, middle, and high schools.

Cecilia Hawkins, who served as the principal of Quest Early College High School for four years, left her position at Quest to work with community organizations in an effort to expand district reform.

From CES’s website (2005):

 

“Inspired by its experience with the Coalition of Essential Schools and the Houston Annenberg Challenge (now the Houston A+ Challenge) through Quest High School… Humble has not only put into place a process to remake its high schools but it has reorganized its entire district…”.

What has come as a surprise to many involved in exposing CSCOPE is the fact that several principals and superintendents seem to have no problem with the Anti-American content, errors, and ’fuzzy math’ found in CSCOPE lessons.

Understandably, it must be difficult to accept that there could be that many radical educators in a state like Texas, willing to break the law and deceive children and parents for profit or to advance a political agenda.

The fact is, Texas is a big state with several universities; and universities, for the most part, have often been a refuge and breeding ground for radicals.

CES schools have always relied heavily on the school-university partnership to implement and advance K-12 reform. ‘Professional development schools‘ are often created wherein universities and schools collaborate to ”prepare new teachers, to renew the professional knowledge of veteran teachers, and to conduct site-based research into teaching and learning”.

 

In many states, CES has infiltrated and affected university course offerings for up and coming teachers, principals, and superintendents.

For example, Sam Houston University, as a requirement for superintendent certification, offers an internship course led by Dr. Shirley Johnson. Johnson is the executive director of Texas Coalition of Essential Schools.

 

According to Johnson’s course syllabus and guidelines, all interns must complete a “Leadership Profile”, the cost of which is to be paid by the student directly to Texas CES. Students are then given the opportunity to attend a feedback session related to the leadership profile — no doubt to allow the instructor to gauge whether the student would be a productive leader in a CES-style school.

 

Several other avenues exist for identifying prospective radical educators for placement in these indoctrination centers. Texas ASCD, for example, who partners with CES and actively promotes and expands CES reform, identifies, recruits, and trains teachers and curriculum leaders, many of whom are identified in collaboration with local universities.

Read about the connections between Texas ASCD and educators behind CSCOPE and Common Core here and here.

 

CSCOPE is Common Core

 

In January of 2010, Governor Rick Perry formally rejected the nationally proposed Common Core State Standards, stating that he would not “commit Texas taxpayers to unfunded federal obligations or to the adoption of unproven, cost-prohibitive national standards and tests”.

Ironically, the very people behind Common Core were already actively working within Perry’s state and had been for many years.

Linda Darling Hammond, one of several radical educators behind the design of CSCOPE, has worked with Texas schools for years through her organization, School Redesign Network.

Achieve, Inc., an organization that has aided in authoring the Common Core standards, launched the American Diploma Project in 2005. Texas was one of 13 states to join the America Diploma Project Network.

 

As I wrote here, Achieve, Inc. is not only made up of several Coalition of Essential Schools/Annenberg reformers, but it was literally created by leaders of the National Governors Association and the Annenberg Institute.

 

The Grow Network (now owned by McGraw-Hill) was founded by David Coleman, who is said to be ’the architect’ of Common Core. In 2004, the Texas Education Agency entered into a four-year, 17.7 million dollar contract with Grow Network for online Personalized Study Guides to be provided to Texas educators and students.

Considering many of the same educators behind CSCOPE are also behind Common Core, and considering the rumor that Common Core offered to purchase the CSCOPE program for use with the national standards; it appears that CSCOPE was a ‘test-run’ for Common Core.

 

It seems likely that Texas is the guinea pig and CSCOPE a pilot project –being tested before going all in and using it with Common Core standards in more than 45 states.

It can’t be a coincidence that the same educators behind Common Core just-so-happened to have been chosen to contribute to the design of CSCOPE. Those educators, Wiggins, Tighe, Hammond, Jacobs, and others, have spent years providing professional development to Texas educators over, and over, and over on how to use their designs and teaching strategies, the same designs they are teaching Common Core states to use with Common Core standards.

 

Here’s an interesting side-note – Although it has been more than three years since Texas rejected Common Core, former Austin ISD Superintendent Pascal Forgione, the same superintendent who has worked hand-in-hand with Alinsky’s IAF and Linda Darling Hammond’s School Redesign Network, is participating in a conference later this year inAustin to discuss Common Core.

 

Forgione is now executive director of Educational Testing Service’s K-12 Center located in Austin.

 

K-12 Center works in partnership with the CCSSO and other organizations to develop Common Core assessment systems and also partners with the Alliance for Excellent Education, where Linda Darling Hammond serves on the board.

 

The conference on Common Core, in which Forgione will be the keynote speaker, is scheduled to take place August 12th-14th in Austin.

 

Did Forgione not get the memo that Texas rejected Common Core, or does he know something that we don’t?


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TX Cscope students chart “PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA”

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Ibn Battuta

 

American Exceptionalism will no longer exist in the minds of our children.  Texas has  joined     ranks with the leftist agenda in indoctrinating our children with a progressive ideology. Over 70% of Texas public schools, some private and charter have purchased and implemented the progressive curriculum,  Cscope. Cscope is based on Obama’s Common Core.  Common Core advocate Linda Darling Hammond is a top education adviser to Obama and is also associated with communist revolutionary Bill Ayers.  Linda Darling Hammond has been a guest speaker at Cscope Conferences and is the quest speaker this February in California for the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) National Conference. Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) is gearing up to attend the National Conference and hear Linda Darling Hammond speak and promote Common Core which, Texas rejected. There fees and travel plans will be paid for with your tax dollars.

Cscope is owned by Texas Education Service Center’s Curriculum Collaborative (TESCCC).  The men and women behind Cscope are the Board of Directors of TESCCC which are the directors of the Texas Education Service Centers excluding ESC 4.

Our children are not being taught about the great men and women who sacrificed their lives for this country nor or they taught that these sacrifices attribute to the FREEDOM we have been so fortunate to enjoy.Instead our children are being indoctrinated  with a pro Islamic, anti christian view. Texas students could benefit greatly from studying the lives of great men such as  Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abe Lincoln or better yet the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. Unfortunately for our children Cscope writers felt it more important that 6 grade students chronicle Islamic Scholar Ibn Battuta’s pilgrimage to Mecca and  Mohammad’s tomb in Medina. The fact that Cscope is pushing a pro Islamic view is indisputable.  Time after time their agenda is exposed, and as soon as it is, the Cscope Reps run to pull the exposed material with a flip of a switch (due to it being an online curriculum). Fortunately there are many concerned about this indoctrination of our children that have already captured the original Cscope documents in order to verify Cscope’s intentions. Here is another captured portion of a 6 grade lesson indicating Cscope reps true intentions to indoctrinate your children with a pro Islamic view.

Cscope Pro Islam View

Cscope Pro Islam View

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For additional information on Cscope and it’s indoctrination go to WWW.TXCSCOPEREVIEW.COM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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