Open Letter to Argyle ISD Parents, Grandparents and Tax Payers
Dear Parents,
My name is Alice Linahan and I am a parent here in Argyle ISD. I need your help to get our local school board to look at the issue of what private data is being collected on our children and what type of testing and assessments will be done during class activities which are monitoring and tracking our children.
The Shift in Education today is away from – Academics; Reading, writing, math and history, which, when taught well, give our children an education of Opportunity (Equal Opportunity) to SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) geared towards, attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors, based on Equity (Equal Outcomes.)
Do you want your child to have an “Equal Opportunity” because they can read, write and do math well? Or, do you want your child to have an education based “Equal Outcomes” limiting opportunity and success for all of our children?
Argyle ISD has entered into a contract with the Region 11 Service Center to provide services such as collecting private data and analyzing that data through their Eduphoria program and providing data tracking, curriculum management systems and test and formative assessment design.
You may have heard of the controversy in Texas against CSCOPE and Common Core nationally. From my research and from fighting the battle against CSCOPE in Texas, I know that CSOCPE was the precursor to these products being rented from Region 11 Service Center to our school district.
Please take the time to listen to this short audio clip of Region 11 CSCOPE curriculum consultant Deanna Jenkins followed by myself and attorney, Robin Eubanks, author of “Credentialed to Destroy,” discussing where all of this is going.
So who is funding all of this and pushing it into our local school district?
The vision and professional development of Superintendents, who are bringing this into all the schools across Texas is TASA (Texas Association of School Administrators). Their vision clearly is not about an education of academics and opportunity. Our kids are being used as guinea pigs for product development and a vision of equity (equal outcomes) and “Human Capital” for workforce development. Workforce development that is being pushed by both Republicans and Democrats alike.
1. The New Digital Learning Environment: “We must embrace and seize technology’s potential to capture the hearts and minds…”
2. New Learning Standards: “The new digital learning environment demands new learning standards…”
3. Assessments for Learning: “Appropriate and varied types of assessment are essential for informing students…”
4. Accountability for Learning: “Comprehensive accountability systems…”
5. Organizational Transformation: The digital revolution and its accompanying social transformations and expectations dictate a transformation of schools…”
6. A More Balanced and Reinvigorated State/Local Partnership: “The present state-dominated partnership is inherently incapable of creating the type of schools…”
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“Transformed Systems for Making the Vision Reality The schools we need are community-owned institutions. They are designed and established as learning organizations, treating employees as knowledge workers and students as the primary customers of knowledge work. They are free of bureaucratic structures that inhibit multiple paths to reaching goals. Reliance on compliance is minimized, and generating engagement through commitment is the primary means to achieving excellence. Leadership at all levels is honored and developed. All operating systems have well-defined processes that are constantly being improved. Attention of leaders is focused on the dominant social systems that govern behavior, beginning with those that clarify beliefs and direction, develop and transmit knowledge, and that provide for recruitment and induction of all employees and students into the values and vision. The evaluation, boundary, and authority systems are submissive to the directional system, allowing for major innovations to flourish, new capacities to emerge, missions to be accomplished, and the vision to be realized in an increasingly unpredictable world.”
A curious superintendent raised his hand and asked the question “What if my older teachers don’t want to go along with these changes?” The answer was given without missing a heartbeat by the facilitator. She used her pointer and pointed to a box on the giant flowchart displayed on the screen behind her, then said, “You watch them, you document their mistakes, and then you get rid of them,” as she pointed to the box marked “Waste Management.” *
This is the future for “experienced” educators who don’t want to do what will be expected of them under the new vision being implemented in schools across America.
The story above was included in the book “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail.”
When I spoke to our school board on July 27th I asked them, what about those amazing teachers who our Argyle Senior students thanked at their graduation this year. Over and over they thanked a Hill Top Elementary teacher for teaching them Math. Math I might add the old fashion way, where 2+2=4.
I am asking you to write an e-mail to our local school board and ask them to take the time to look at this contract with Region 11 and decide, is this the path and direction we want Argyle ISD to go. This contract is not binding until Sept. 1, 2015 so there is time to stop it.
But they must hear from parents “NOW.”
As Dr. Sandra Stotsky (who was appointed to validate the Common Core in English/Language Arts and refused to because it would put our children behind at least 2 to 3 years) stated in this short clip below. In order to stop this fundamental transformation in Education today, we must call on our local school boards to act!
Please join me in contacting our school board today!!
Below is a link to each of their emails. http://argyleisd.com/board.asp
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Together we can make a difference for all of our children.
Here is a link to the Open letter to the Argyle School Board, I wrote to them earlier in the week.
Sincerely,
Alice Linahan
Argyle Parent
