I need a hero to stop CSCOPE in Texas

Texas State Board of Education Chair Barbara Cargill met with Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, Sen. Duncan, and others including Marty Rowley, the CSCOPE Ad Hoc committee chair.

It was decided that Rowley’s AD Hoc committee needs to be reactivated to review the CSCOPE social studies lessons for alignment with the state-adopted TEKS and to check for factual errors and/or bias.

Because hundreds of school districts have defiantly said they are going to use these CSCOPE lessons in classrooms even past the August 31, 2013 date, it is important for the Ad Hoc to renew their work to make sure that Texas children are exposed to instructional materials that are aligned with the state-adopted curriculum standards (TEKS).

The following SBOE members have been asked to serve on the Ad Hoc — Pat Hardy, Mavis Knight, and Tom Maynard.  More details will be forthcoming.

The SBOE will oversee the Ad Hoc committee process with the hopes that local school districts will take seriously the posted evaluations and recommendations regarding the CSCOPE social studies lessons.

The comments from the Ad Hoc should help school districts to implement SB 1474 —http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=83R&Bill=SB1474 — which mandates that teachers, district employees, members of the public, and local school board members be a part of the decision-making process to implement major curriculum initiatives.

The choices that the group yesterday had were either (1) to ignore the fact that teachers still plan to use the CSCOPE lessons or (2) to confront the situation head-on, evaluate the lessons, and make sure that the lessons are aligned with the TEKS and that errors and/or bias are removed.

The plan is to have this CSCOPE review of the social studies lessons finished by October 2013 so that the SBOE can continue with its very busy and important schedule of evaluating instructional materials.

In the September and November SBOE meetings, the Board will hold public hearings for people wanting to testify about the K-12 science and K-8 math (Corrected)  instructional materials that are currently being reviewed.