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TEXAS EDUCATORS UNPROPESSIONALISM

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dali goddess

 

My activism in exposing CSCOPE has brought me a host of enemies in the Texas education industry.  They appear to be at ease with the controversial lessons where reading verses of the Quran in class, drawing new communist flags, portraying the Boston Tea Party as a terrorist act, etc. are the norm.  Despite that the lessons are biased and the teachers are being controlled and told what, when and how to teach with the CSCOPE program, they seem fine with that.  Many teachers have left the profession of teaching or have moved to work in private or charters schools.

 Dr. Brent Hawkins, ESC 6 Assistant Director and Cathy Moak, ESC 6 Component Director for School Transformation and Digital Learning have once again come out against me, showing their unprofessionalism in the process. My legal name is Rajene. I have never used the name RAJENE and someone must have taken the time to research me very thoroughly to have come across my legal name . Ms. Moak, in trying to paint me as something evil, searched my legal name on the internet and came up with the Sanskrit meaning of my legal name even though it’s reference has a different spelling and posted in on TWITTER. In her eyes I am the “dark one” a Hindu goddess. Dr. Hawkins also found this worthy information and chose to re-tweet it.

dark one

director hawkins

In 53 years I have never researched my legal name so I did some research of my own.  I summarize that Cathy must have looked pretty hard until she came up with something in order to demonize me with. I googled RAJENE and found another definition which I particularly favor in the following link, which is posted below and even has the correct spelling of my legal name. I am glad that my critics lead me to look up what my name really means and due to the fact that Dr. Hawkins told me months ago that I was not going to “tear apart something they have implemented”, it seems to fit really well. I don’t know who specifically “THEY”  are in Dr. Hawkins comment but I think I as well other activist across the state have been pretty successful in exposing the progressive agenda of these educators though the battle is far from over.

rajene

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CSCOPE WHISTLEBLOWERS SPEAK OUT!

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I posted an article yesterday  revealing a situation I perceive to be a “Conflict of Interest” taking place in the Huntsville Independent School District. Read it HERE.

Shortly after posting the article I received the following  comments from Huntsville ISD school
board member,Sam Moak.

 

I am Sam Moak. I am a Christian, a husband, a father and a son. Yes my wife works at Education Service Center Region VI. So did my mother, for 37 years. I do not follow anyone and I think for myself. Am I perfect, no, but I am honest and have done nothing wrong. Yes, our children did attend Alpha Omega Academy, a wonderful Christian school. It was a choice as Christians we made and I am not afraid of. However, due to situations related to my wife’s illness, we choose to move to HISD. I am a graduate of HISD and proud of both AOA and HISD. CSCOPE is a political issue. Unfortunately, all the children of Texas are victims of this political battle. I only want what is the best for all the children of Huntsville. HISD cannot afford, nor can the vast majority of school districts in Texas, to hire a curriculum writer. Therefore, long before I was on the HISD School Board, the decision was made to use CSCOPE as a resource. It’s use was and never has been mandated at HISD. I am tired of hearing Mrs. Russell and her mother, Janice Van Cleave, repeat over and over the problems with CSCOPE. They point to 3 or 4 lessons in the social studies segment and brand the entire 1600 lessons as bad. Mrs. Russell you choose to homeschool your child(ren) and your mother, Janice Van Cleave, has made quite a nice living selling over 89 education products to homeschoolers, some of which is written (oh Horror), in other languages. I find nothing wrong with families that choose to homeschool, however, I suspect your motives are not true. You use the Tea Party and Senator Dan Patrick and any means you can to attack public school districts and the wonderful money saving Education Service Centers throughout our state. It would cost our school districts, and thus the taxpayers, millions of dollars to replace the Education Service Centers. But is your real purpose to support a voucher system in Texas? A system that allows folks who can afford to segregate their children from other children? Or is it to help promote your choice of homeschooling and to sell education material written by your mother? Or do you Mrs. Russell support purchasing our children’s curriculum from a foreign based entity (Pearson) that sells curriculum to 70 other countries including Islamic ones? What is your educational background? Training? What makes you such a self proclaimed expert on education?

 

Whistleblower responses….

ME

 

 

 

 

Ginger Russell

Mr. Moak,

I did not wake up one day and decide to fight the public school system in Texas. Not by a long shot. I have always been politically active and my mother has not. Unfortunately the cause fell in my lap when mom asked me to look into a situation she found her self in.

My mother is in her 70’s and retired. She spends time serving her community by visiting widows in nursing homes and tutoring. This all started over a year ago when she tried to tutor some children in her local school district. When she asked them where their textbooks were they said they had none. (RED FLAG) The teacher knew mom’s reputation and gave her a copy of a CSCOPE science lesson. Finding it riddled with errors she asked for additional lessons and was refused. (RED FLAG) She had even taught in this particular school district years earlier prior to her writing. Needless to say she ended up in her local ESC in Waco where they refused to let her see the CSCOPE lessons as well. The actions and behavior by all involved raised some serious (RED FLAGS). I put mom in contact with SBOE chairman Barbara Cargill who had not heard of CSCOPE either and she also requested the ESC to give her a password and they refused (RED FLAG). Barbara was not able to get a password to CSCOPE for six months until Gov Perry got involved (RED FLAG).

When the CSCOPE reps in Austin found out who mom was they drove to her local town of Marlin to meet with her. SERIOUSLY! I along with another gentlemen attended the meeting to their surprise. They had hoped they could team up on her 5 to 1 and were not happy with our presence. I have the whole meeting recorded HERE. It is long and boring. But at one point in the conversation I handed the CSCOPE State Coordinator,  the Islamic Powerpoint and he tries to deny it (RED FLAG).

I then filed a Public Information Request and TESCCC asked the attorney General to deem them a “non governmental entity” which he denied. They also stated that mom was a CSCOPE competitor in hopes he would rule on their behalf. The lie has made it’s round through the education system.

We then started going public and teachers would contact us anonymously asking for help. They informed us that their administrators were having them to sign non disclosure statements that they would not release the contents or say anything negative about it. (RED FLAG).

I spoke at the Willis ISD Board meeting in October in regard to CSCOPE. I had no idea at the time who Lindy McCullogh (ESC CSCOPE COORDINATOR) was or that she was there. She spoke after me and was obviously outraged that I had spoke out against CSCOPE. (RED FLAG)

I later called ESC director Brent Hawkins and in our conversation he said “you will not tear apart something we implemented”. (RED FLAG)

Now, with all the flags and strange behavior by some many educators in regard to CSCOPE we knew something had to be done. By this time a couple of veteran educators had contacted us and started talking.

Needless to say when you have an educational program that is riddled with the controversial material, parents can’t see it, teachers silenced and threatened with prosecution for releasing content, etc, that was enough RED FLAGS for us.

Being politically active I had a personal meeting with the LT Governor in January. Dewhurst said he would have the chairman of the Senate Education Committee which was Dan Patrick hold an education hearing on it. And he did. The rest is history.

I have not even got into the financials in regard to CSCOPE or their lack of transparency.

It has taken me over a year to finally find out what CSCOPE is all about and it was to implement “project based learning”(PBL) in the schools. PBL is based on the collective not individual achievement. PBL is quite the opposite of a Classical Education that your children received at Alpha Omega.

Huntsville ISD has spent thousands attended TASA’s Transformation Academies which is all about PBL. Why? Why do you support this radical change?

Now this week I get an article about Huntsville ISD’s waiver request. I saw your last name and it rang a bell with due to the fact that your wife had sent me twitter feeds months back and I put the pieces together. The more I research the more of this I find. It is one big spider web and the tax payers are paying out the butt for it.

How christian conservatives can set back and ignore what is going on is beyond me, I can’t do it. My children and grandchildren deserve better.

As for as mom and her books she has been accused of doing this for money. We got where we just laugh. If anything this has cost us both.

I am by no way a self proclaimed expert on education. Yes, I did home school both of my children who are now college graduates and married. But I do know it is wrong to pass out verses of the Quran to students, I know it is wrong to have students draw new Communist Flags,I know it is wrong to have students learn about the sex life of Islamic Women, etc, etc.. enough on the lessons. I know it was unacceptable and wrong to not allow parents to view what their children were taught. I know it is wrong to have teachers threatened with a lawsuit for disclosing content or speaking negatively about a curriculum. How you can ignore this? How can you vote to purchase this crap again and petition the state for a waiver is beyond me.

I want you to know yes mom and I have a following of conservative christian activist… but there are 100’s across the state that supply us information as to what is going on in their local area. We are not in this alone, not by a long shot. The days of our local school districts hiding and spending money with no oversight is over.

I am sure your and your wife are wonderful loving christian parents.

But I do wonder why and how you and other proclaimed christian people can set back and ignore this progressive ideology that is taking over our school system.

If you have any further questions I will be happy to answer them.

Ginger Russell
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD”
~Psalms 33:12~

 

Janice VanCleave

This email is being sent to Sam Moak, a Huntsville ISD School Board Member, whose wife works at Region 6 and sells CSCOPE to the Huntsville ISD. Mr.Moak left a comment on www.redhotconservative.com stating that he is tired of me and my daughter, Ginger Russell, attacking CSCOPE. I don’t want to misquote Mr. Moak, so I’ll paste his comments here:
” I am tired of hearing Mrs. Russell and her mother, Janice Van Cleave, repeat over and over the problems with CSCOPE. They point to 3 or 4 lessons in the social studies segment and brand the entire 1600 lessons as bad. Mrs. Russell you choose to homeschool your child(ren) and your mother, Janice Van Cleave, has made quite a nice living selling over 89 education products to homeschoolers, some of which is written (oh Horror), in other languages. I find nothing wrong with families that choose to homeschool, however, I suspect your motives are not true. You use the Tea Party and Senator Dan Patrick and any means you can to attack public school districts and the wonderful money saving Education Service Centers throughout our state. It would cost our school districts, and thus the taxpayers, millions of dollars to replace the Education Service Centers. But is your real purpose to support a voucher system in Texas? A system that allows folks who can afford to segregate their children from other children? Or is it to help promote your choice of homeschooling and to sell education material written by your mother? Or do you Mrs. Russell support purchasing our children’s curriculum from a foreign based entity (Pearson) that sells curriculum to 70 other countries including Islamic ones? What is your educational background? Training? What makes you such a self proclaimed expert on education?”
 

Hi Sam,

I am Ginger Russell’s mother, Janice VanCleave and want to address some of the points you have made. 
 
First, concerned citizens do not have to have an education background to question what is being taught in the public school. But, I do have an education background and continue to study up todate educational teaching method that are applicable for classroom as well as home study. My background includes 27 years in public schools, mostly in Texas. My second career was writing science experiment books for kids and educators. My third career or I might say project is creating a science website with the primary focus on science fair projects, thus I feel very qualified to evaluate the CSCOPE Performance Indicators as well as other progressive Project Based Learning lessons (PBL). Those creating PBL lessons do not truly understand how to prepare students to use critical thinking to solve problems. They fail to provide kids with the tools for critical thinking. 
this is because they are using the constructivist/progressive teaching method, which assumes students come to class with the foundation knowledge and using this can discover for themselves. Parents can best understand this method by remember their child’s first science fair project or maybe every science fair project. The teacher announces that everyone is to do a science fair project–gives a list of all the necessary parts and sends them off. This is when I receive panic emails from kids and parents –How does one do a science fair project? Same method is being used with all PBL. No critical thinking–just anxiety and frustration. Now that the CSCOPE lessons are public domain, I can provide you with more information.
 
About using 2 to 3 social studies lessons to condemn an entire curriculum. If you had listened to the Senate Education Committee hearing on CSCOPE, you would have heard evidence of many lessons. Barbara Cargill, chair of the state board of education had in her hands a folder full of examples that were pointed out to the committee. These were CSCOPE science, math, ELAR and social studies lessons all with errors and/or biases. How many of the CSCOPE lessons have you personally evaluated? Do the school board members at Huntsville ISD have passwords to the CSCOPE website?
 
FYI:  After being refused a password to CSCOPE for six months, Governor Perry had to request that Barbara Cargill, the chair of the State Board of Education, be given a password to the CSCOPE website. This tells you how secretive the content of the CSCOPE lessons were prior to the Senate Education Committee hearing on CSCOPE. Again, how many CSCOPE lessons have you evaluated?
 
I have asked and received all science lessons K-8 from teachers who must remain anonymous. This is a sad statement. The CSCOPE lessons should have been public domain from the start. The ESCs are not suppose to support any one vendor and they become a vendor themselves. The ESCs are suppose to provide service to a specific region and they grouped together creating a one-size-fits-all curriculum with the goal of educating students across Texas EQUALLY. This can only be done by scripting lessons and school administrators monitor educators to force them to follow the script. Some give teachers more flexibility but still provide them with CSCOPE lessons that have never been evaluated for correctness. You sir, refuse to believe me when I tell you that all the the science lessons incorrectly present the scientific method which is 40% of the Science STAAR Tests. Not one CSCOPE administrator or School Board Member wants proof. I’ll start posting examples onWWW.TXCSCOPEREVIEW.com 
 
As to Pearson Publishing, this company basically controls Texas Education now. Pearson helps write the STAAR/EOCs. Pearson publishes and grades the STAAR/EOCs. Pearson decides the evaluation of STAAR/EOC grades, thus this foreign based company controls what students are taught and whether they have mastered the concepts. Pearson also publishes study books for the STAAR/EOC tests. If schools purchased any materials it should be these study guides. Who knows more about the STAAR/EOCs than the company that writes and prints these tests? Does Pearson Publishing have an unfair advantage in the education market in Texas, you bet! Do the ESCs have an unfair market advantage over education materials sold in Texas? No doubt about it. Of course the ESCs have better prices for their vendor products, the state of Texas pays their employess, pays for offices, in fact pays all overhead. What the ESCs sell is pure non-taxed profit. Do the ESCs fairly compete with other vendors–No. I think you call this a monopoly. Now the CSCOPE money trail would be interesting. Where is all this money? I would like the ESCs to stop being vendors and start being independent service centers again. There is nothing fun and personnal about the ESCs now. It was fun to have the teacher workroom where educators and even parents could go to make cutouts for their class. This is gone and it was important. Some ESCs loaned out science critters. This should be part of every ESC. The ESCs could be providing wonderful services to schools in their district, instead the atmosphere at the ESCs is cloaked in secrecy. You have the STAFFERs who are kept in the dark and the CSCOPE group whispering and making new plans (documented statement from an observer).
Pearson Publishing also sponsors TASA/TASB the private organization that school board members and superintendents pay membership and conference fees using the school taxes. This is no small amount— $100 Million has been estimated from the information collected from school districts. Yes, some of this money is for things like school insurance. But, why not buy from some local group? Citizens pay school taxes, superintendents and school board members give some of it to a private organization that is sabatoging STATE Education with their Vision Learning program to transform Texas Education. Were school taxes used to pay for the anyone from your school district to attend the TASA transition training?
 
Sam, I am not sure I understand this statement you made:
Janice Van Cleave, has made quite a nice living selling over 89 education products to homeschoolers, some of which is written (oh Horror), in other languages.
 

How I make my living has nothing to do with my questions of what is being taught in the Texas public schools. I do not write textbooks, nor do I write K-12 curriculum for every subject. I write science experiment books for kids and resource science/math books for educators. In no way is my work competitive with CSCOPE. In fact, prior to the development of CSCOPE in 2006, I was hired by many of the Texas Education Service Centers to present science workshops for Texas Educators. Region 12 is near my home and I have been involved with this group since 1975 as a teacher in the region as well as an author. As a science author, I was an honorary member of the Region 12 Science Consortium. I payed my own way to event and provided supplies and science books to the teachers in this group. Becca Bell, the CSCOPE director at Region 12 recently informed me that she never heard of an honorary member. I was welcomed at Region 12 prior to my asking to view the CSCOPE lessons. I dropped in with supplies and was welcomed. CSCOPE has taken the fun out everything it touches.   

 
As to your comment “OH Horror” in reference to the foreign translations. It is strange that school board members and superintendents responsible for purchasing CSCOPE for their schools feel the need to attack me and my work. I have met with Wade Labay, STATE CSCOPE director, and we have respect for each other though we disagree about CSCOPE. Mr. Lebay doesn’t share your view of me or my work. During a meeting with Mr. Lebay and Ed Vega, supervisor of CSCOPE curriculum, Ed brought a copy of one of  my books and asked me to authograph it. I will contact these men today and ask them to give me a reference to post.  
 
As to only 2 to 3 social studies lessons being incorrect. These lessons caught the eye of the news media and continued to be discussed. But it was the lack of transparency that first alarmed me and got the news media interested. It was hard to get people to believe that in Texas Public Schools lessons were being taught that parents were not allowed to view. It was hard to get people to believe that teachers were being so micromanaged. Parents are aware of the truth now and it will be difficult for superintendents and school boards to continue purchasing unapproved education materials. Parents and concerned citizens will start demanding to be part of the decision making of the school. School board members are suppose to represent the community, but education materials have become a very profitable business for the 20 ESCs. 
 
Is there any conflict of interest in you being on a region 6 school board where you approve the CSCOPE product that your wife who works at Region 6 sells? Of course there is.

 
As to my supporting the voucher system. I know very little about this. As to people that can afford to use voucher so they can segregate their children from public schools. What’s the difference in putting children in private schools instead of sending them to public schools? I cannot say that I support the voucher system, but do support parents that choose the best education for their children and if they think the public schools are not providing this, then they should have some way to do so without having to move. I live near Marlin Texas. The Marlin ISD schools have failed the state tests for so many years that it is not even news worthy. Seven consecutive years of failure makes it difficult for families that have no choice but care about their children’s education. Families have taken new jobs so that they can move out of Marlin.
Yes, Marlin ISD uses CSCOPE and that is where I was first introduced to this curriculum. A friend with an afterschool program asked me to tutor elementary children in science and math. The children in Marlin ISD are not issued text books. Does Huntsville ISD provide textbooks to students? I hope so because without textbooks parents have no clue what is being taught to their children. Without textbooks, kids have no resources to do any homestudy. Without textbooks, the education of our kids is limited to what teachers present in class and how much students remember. Yes, class notebooks are required in every class at all grade levels. Thus, the class notebook and what students write in it is all students have to review at home for class tests as well as the STAAR Test.
 
One elementary teacher that taught in a CSCOPE school last year was forced to follow the CSCOPE lessons. She insisted on providing science books to her students. The administration did not want teachers using books because as promoted by the CSCOPE vendor (including region 6), even books aligned with the revised TEKS cannot update changes in the TEKs as often as the CSCOPE online curriculum can. This is a false statement in that the TEKS for a subject are not changed often. The science TEKS were introduced in the fall of 2010 and the next science TEKS revision will be introduced in 2016. The same is true for TEKS in other subjects. Another false statement promoted by Region 6 and the other 19 ESCs (the CSCOPE Vendor) is that books that are not aligned with the revised TEKS do not have information needed to teach these new TEKS. Not True.
 
Science books with the TEKS for TAKS Tests have the same information with very few changes as the revised science books aligned with the new TEKS for STAAR Tests. 
 
Did you know that the 20 ESCs were paid $100 million dollars to prepare transition materials for Texas Eductors. YES I said $100 Million. Did they do it? Ask your local Region 6 for copies of this material. It was the transition material teachers needed. But 800 school districts were sold CSCOPE. Why? The ESCs had FREE material for the Texas Teachers. I have copies of this material. Do your teachers?
 
Did you know that Region 6 received $1,041,156, just to present workshops for teachers in  Region 6 during the summer of 2010 through the spring of 2011. Did your teachers attend? Were they invited?
 
In 2011 Region 6 received $2,914,384 Million, yes almost $3 MILLION dollars just to present workshops to Texas Teachers so that they would be prepared to present the new social studies and math TEKs.
 
There was never a reason for CSCOPE—the 20 ESCs received a total of another $100 Million dollars to prepare Texas Educators to adapt their teaching materials to the new TEKS. Were the Huntsville teachers at these workshops or did Region 6 sell Huntsville CSCOPE materials instead of providing the FREE materials they were paid millions of dollars to prepare, present and post on the Project Share?
 
Are these the same ESCs that you have such concern about? 
 
At the bottom of this note I have a copy of the millions paid to Region 6. I will send this letter to region 6 and request an account of what they did with more than $4 million dollars. They didn’t give $4 million dollars of service to the educators in region 6. Instead they sold CSCOPE  to school districts and some such as Huntsville are still standing behind the CSCOPE product. Maybe you should be asking Region 6 why they sold CSCOPE instead of giving it to your free– $4 million dollars is a lot of money and it should have provided your school with something free. 
 
Note: The attached files show how much each of the 20 ESCs received in two years to provide materials that Texas teachers still don’t know anything about. Let me suggest that you ask Region 6 to pull out that Rider 42 TEKS materials they were paid millions to present and start giving those workshops now. This solves the problem of not having the CSCOPE lessons. 
 
About these Free Rider 42 TEKS Workshops. 
 The 81 Texas Legislature gave TEA via Rider 42 grant over $150 MILLION— I emphasize that this is MILLIONS of dollars. The objective being for the 20 ESCs to prepare materials so that teachers could easily transition from the TEKS for TAKS tests to the revised TEKS for STAAR TESTs. Science and ELAR Rider 42 academies were to be presented during the summer of 2010. All the 20 ESCs were given $50 MILLION dollars to create science and ELAR Rider 42 PD materials, post it on the Project Share website and give face-to-face hands-on Science and ELAR workshops. 
 
Did all the teachers from Huntsville ISD attend these special multi-million dollar workshops that were FREE. These workshops were to provide information so that teachers could easily transition from the Science and ELAR TEKS/TAKS to the TEKS/STAAR. Again, the 20 ESCs were paid $50 MILLION dollars to write materials so that all Texas teachers would start the 2010-2011 school year prepared. 
 
The Rider 42 materials were to show a side-by-side comparison of the two sets of TEKS, old with the new. Teachers were to be shown any old TEKS that included in the new TEKS. Teachers were to be shown new TEKS not used the previous year. In other words, the two sets of TEKS were to be totally compared. This was to be done so that teachers could modify their TEKS/TAKS scope and sequence. To modify their curriculum. To modify the lessons used with the TEKS/TAKS so that the new TEKS/STAAR would be emphasized. 
 
The main differences between the two sets of TEKS for a specific subject mainly referenced an increase in content. It is not that the revised TEKS were so much more rigorous, it is the STAAR tests that are more rigorous. This means that the TEKS need to be considered the minimum framework and lessons need to do much more than be aligned with the TEKS. This is one reason CSCOPE does not properly prepare students for the state tests Another reason is that the CSCOPE lessons have so many factual errors. 
 
Administrators and school board members who have purchased CSCOPE seem not to be aware that this free material was prepared and that the 20 ESCs admited that they did nothing special to notify Texas Schools about it. Yes a few teachers saw the workshops listed in the catalog of each ESC, but it should have been the most attended workshops ever given. This was the transition material that allowed teachers to revise their lessons so that new curriculum and lessons were not needed. Veteran teachers didn’t have to attend workshops to know this, but they were vilified any time they tried to provide information. The 20 ESCs had a product(CSCOPE) they wanted to sell. The big selling point for CSCOPE was that it provided all the materials teachers needed for the new TEKS. The ESCs instructed administrators that lessons for TEKS/TAKS could not be used for the new TEKS/STAAR–this was a lie.
Veteran teachers knew this but were said to be lazy and only wanted to use their old lessons because they were used to them. Veteran teachers were said to be out of date and didn’t want to spend the time learning the new modern 21st Century Education Technology that the online CSCOPE curriculum could provide. The ESCs went so far as to train administrators that Veteran teachers were trouble makers. The slide shown is from an ESC training power point for Administrators.

   vetern teachrers

One administrator said that CSCOPE fills the gap between the textbooks aligned with TEKS/TAKS until textbooks for TEKS/STAAR are published. This identifies this administrators lack of knowledge of the content of textbooks. Other than add the new TEKS with comments, the science content of the old and revised textbook changes so very little. New pictures and graphs, a face lift so to speak. So for the ESCs to claim textbooks are not useful for our modern technology world are in it for the money because they are only trying to sell their online CSCOPE product. 
 
Parents need to demand that the school provide as well as use textbooks in every class. Yes, there are things in textbooks that parents are not going to approve of, but at least they are aware of this. Unlike the CSCOPE lessons that remained hidden from parents for six years. Parents are now aware and will be more questioning of what is being taught in 2012-2013. The terms used to confuse parents in the past won’t work because they now know what all the education double talk given by CSCOPE schools mean. 
 
 
 rider 42 (1)
 
rider 42 (2)

 

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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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WARNING: PROJECT BASED LEARNING

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5-31-2013 11-25-53 PM

Teach children to think! You would think this is some new concept listening to liberal educators today.  I first heard this statement being championed by a CSCOPE Coordinator last year. After exercising my constitutional right to speak before the Willis ISD school board Oct/2012 regarding my concerns in relation to CSCOPE, ESC 6’s CSCOPE coordinator Lindy McColloch quickly tried to marginalize my concerns at this public forum  speaking after me. At the time I was unaware of Ms. McColloch’s presence in the room or who she was.

 

My Statements

Lindy McColloch comments

 

I found her anger and attitude concerning. Why would a state employee address a concerned citizen in this manner over a “curriculum”? After investigating CSCOPE and the behavior of those that support it, I and other critics soon realized there was a major problem. Not only were the lessons of poor quality and anti- american, teachers felt like they could not speak out and express their concerns out of fear of losing their jobs. Teachers felt controlled and intimidated by administration.  CSCOPE test did not match the material being taught. Students were failing, etc. Teachers began sending us emails thanking us for fighting for them.

The bigger picture started becoming apparent after more research. Texas Education Service Centers along with TASA and TASB and other organizations are in the works of implementing a Marxist based teaching philosophy called Project Based Learning (PBL). PBL is based on the Marxist Lev Vygotsky’s teaching philosophy.

With Project Based Learning (PBL) students create their own learning and build upon what they may already know. Students are not taught correct or factual information. Getting the correct answer is not important.  The learning process is built on group learning, based on the collective and not individual achievement.

I found this document from ESC 14 which will give you information and websites educating you what Project Based Learning (PBL) is.  I was reading the document and I behold I ran across that statement again, Teach children to think!

pbl

 

After is was announced that CSCOPE would drop their lessons I filed a public information requesting asking what ESC 6 sent to it’s local school districts addressing the issue. As you will read ESC’s continue to implement their progressive plan of Project Based Learning. Fortunately Parents and Grandparents are waking up to what the progressives are up to.

Here is the document that was sent.

Lindy Mc

 

 

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Does Texas School Curriculum Sell America Short?

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by Andrew Horansky / KHOU 11 News

khou.com

Posted on May 6, 2013 at 10:24 PM

Updated today at 10:40 PM

HOUSTON — Some parents say students in Texas are the victims of a plan to rewrite history. Parents are taking aim at CSCOPE, a program being used in about three-quarters of all Texas school districts.

According to parent Kathy Rogers, one lesson equates the Boston Tea Party patriots to terrorists.

“It looked like what they were trying to do was make capitalism and democracy obsolete,” she said.

Her daughter is a junior in the Friendswood ISD, one of the districts buying into the private program.

In one lesson, students design a flag for an imaginary communist country. Critics say it leans too far left.

“I think basically they’re trying to downplay American culture. They’re trying to downplay American exceptionalism,” Rogers said.

Brent Hawkins is an administrator with the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative (TESCCC) and has heard the complaints.

He believes that they are the exception and not the norm.

“CSCOPE was not written in California, it was not written in the liberal state of Massachusetts, it was written here in Texas by Texas teachers,” he said.

When it started a few years ago, CSCOPE was intended to help smaller districts save money. It created a standard core curriculum for grades K-12 which encouraged teaching through technology over textbooks.

“The efficiency of it, the price savings that’s been passed on to school districts, you’ve seen some of the larger districts see a value in that and buy in as well,” Hawkins said.

But parents say it has not always been transparent. Much of the learning comes off computers seen only in classrooms.

They say there is no way to check all that is in there and worry catching all mistakes may be impossible.

“It’s like ‘whack-a-mole,’” Kathy Rogers said. “You take something out but who knows if five things that are wrong aren’t added at the same time or at different times.”

Combine that with the critics’ view that CSCOPE sends too many mixed signals about America’s greatness, and it becomes clear why legislators are now getting involved.

Houston State Senator Dan Patrick recently passed a CSCOPE bill calling for a thorough review. The findings are due in four or five months.

“I’d like to put CSCOPE out of business,” Sen. Patrick said. “What we have is in my view is a rogue curriculum being taught in over 800 of our 1000 school districts that has never been under review, that has never been fact checked, and even the people who run CSCOPE don’t know what’s in their own lessons.”

For now, the Friendswood ISD has suspended the social studies portion. Rogers started a website so that parents can share notes on what their kids are learning.

For them, history is being written while they take on an entire curriculum.

 

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Cscope…Bloom’s Taxonomy..

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Bloom’s Taxonomy, Lower Order of Thinking in Texas Schools 

 

By Cathy Wells

Statue of The Thinker

Social constructivist philosophy tries quite hard to produce what is deemed “higher order
thinking skills.” Another semantical game is being played here because, honestly, what parent
is going to say, “I don’t want my child to have thinking skills!” Indeed, I can also say that I
certainly want my children to graduate from high school with some critical thinking skills (we
used to call that common sense). But how are these thinking skills to be achieved? What
makes them “higher?” What is meant by “higher order thinking skills?” Again, let us begin by
defining terms.
Parents might say that “thinking skills” would be something akin to common sense, scrutiny,
discernment, or ability to think under pressure. What does this term mean to the social
constructivist? This will take awhile. Higher order thinking skills theory is based on Bloom’s
Taxonomy. Who is Bloom? Benjamin Bloom was a behavioral psychologist (I hope you are
noticing how much behavioral psychology is popping up in education) who developed a
taxonomy or “breaking down into small units and naming” of what he considered to be typical
and necessary thinking skills or educational objectives. So, when we ask what is the point of
education, to social constructivists, the point is to achieve all of Bloom’s taxonomilogical goals.
Just so you know, just about all modern educational theory is based on this taxonomy and every
teacher is familiar with it. (Consequently, it is very difficult to get teachers to think outside this
paradigm thought we did very well without it for most of educational history and it seems to
have led us down a very rocky path.)
Bloom listed six separate levels of thinking skills: knowledge, comprehension, application,
analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The last three of these are the “higher order” thinking skills.
Now let me pause a moment to say that, if you study this list, it seems rather logical. In any
area, we must first acquire knowledge, then understanding, learn how to apply those, analyze
any mistakes we make, fuse all of that knowledge together, and ultimately become expert at it
and be able to teach it to someone else. The problem comes in with this: In 1987, the National
Research Council announced that these skills don’t need to be acquired IN ORDER and should,
in fact, be acquired out of order. They suggested that we begin implementing higher order
thinking skills in elementary school.
As a classical educator, I immediately see the folly of this approach. We used to have what
were called “grammar” schools because those were the buildings in which we loaded basic facts
into children: their “knowledge.” As they moved into middle schools, they began to acquire
comprehension and application. In high school, we moved them toward “higher thinking
skills.” This is, coincidentally, how the brain is hard-wired. The concrete stage of development
comes first during those first six years of school. Then the abstract stage begins where students
start synthesizing the facts they’ve learned and applying them to life. Finally, they move on to a
stage in which they can discuss, argue, or teach a point as needed. That is a traditional/classical
approach to education.
What CSCOPE and other curricula have managed to do is completely confuse students by
trying to jumble all of the different levels of skills as per the recommendations of the NRC and
other research. The end result is akin to tasking someone with making a croissant dough by first
evaluating the end product, the process, and the dough itself without giving you a recipe or
ingredients list.
I very much doubt that any parents of Texas students would approve of this methodology if they
knew about it. And as those of us left here in Texas who still have a modicum of common
sense know, “That dog won’t hunt.”

 

 

After reading the above article I googled Cscope and Blooms Taxonomy and found the Cscope power point below created by Paula-Pemberton-Kelm  from Texas Education Service Center VI.

 

CSCOPE POWERPOINT ON BLOOMS TAXONOMY

Blooms

 

 

 

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