If you are in Dallas on 5/16/2013 we highly encourage you to attend the AD HOC CSCOPE Meeting. Here is a link to the information TEA Adhoc CSCOPE Meeting 

From Donna Garner: 

Sen. Dan Patrick has taken the CSCOPE issue very seriously (please see his Facebook link posted further on down the page), and I appreciate his efforts on that education issue.

Unfortunately, while Sen. Patrick has been doing some effective investigation of CSCOPE, he and the other Legislators are doing irreparable harm to the high education standards set in place by those of us who have battled for well over 10 years to increase the knowledge-based, academic rigor of our Texas public school students:

5.14.13 – “Texas Legislators: Determining Students’ Fate” — http://educationviews.org/texas-legislators-determining-students-fate/

5.8.13 — “Duped Through Ignorance or Intent: Texas Legislators”  — http://educationviews.org/duped-through-ignorance-or-intent-texas-legislators/

To be totally honest, it is SB 6 that was passed during the last legislative session and supported by Sen. Patrick and other legislators which opened the door to the proliferation of CSCOPE and other inferior and out-of-alignment curriculum throughout our state.  Under SB 6, these materials can be purchased with taxpayers’ dollars at the local level without their having to pass through the organized and public review process of the elected members of the Texas State Board of Education.

What makes that SBOE review process so important is that it is done publicly!  First, the IM (instructional materials such as textbooks, etc.) are made public; and copies of the IM with page numbers, lesson unit numbers, and other identifiers are made available so that people who review them can designate problem passages along with the exact reference points. The hard copies of the IM make it possible for evaluators to cut/copy/paste exact passages onto a WORD document along with reference points and evaluators’ comments, expediting the ability for all concerned to be able to discuss the same passages with one another.

In contrast, CSCOPE materials are a hodge-podge of various pages; they are not consecutively paginated; the pages are erratically formatted with small and hard-to-read print, making it extremely difficult to read online. Because of the way CSCOPE is formatted, an evaluator cannot cut/copy/paste troublesome excerpts from the online site in order to put those passages into a WORD document along with proper documentation and page references for ease of transmittal to other committee members.  How can committee members discuss the problem verbiage if all of the members cannot easily locate the same passages at the same time in the CSCOPE lessons?

Before any review can be done by anyone, including the SBOE, CSCOPE must provide their materials in print form with consistent formatting for ease of reading and with the ability for reviewers to be able to cut/copy/paste questionable passages onto a WORD document with accompanying documentation and reference points.

Until CSCOPE provides the materials in a workable format with pagination and reference points, it is useless for anyone to try to review the lesson content.  Simply putting the CSCOPE lessons online will not allow for the free-flow of discussion among the evaluators.

The good of the SBOE public review is that it will do just that – make the CSCOPE lessons public.  Then the public can testify, offer their concerns along with documentation, and discuss with the SBOE in open session the various passages.  This is the advantage of putting CSCOPE under the purview of the SBOE: transparency.

Once the problem passages are identified, they should be submitted to CSCOPE; and if the normal textbook adoption process were in place, any problem passages left in the CSCOPE lessons would accrue a sizeable penalty.  Wouldn’t it be nice if those penalties had to be paid out of the pockets of the CSCOPE directors who allowed objectionable passages to remain in the lessons?    

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5.15.13 – From Sen. Dan Patrick regarding the latest news on CSCOPE: https://www.facebook.com/dan.patrick.texas

5.6.13 – Letter from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to TESCCC making it clear that parents should not be charged a fee to access CSCOPE materials: https://www.oag.state.tx.us/oagNews/release.php?id=4394