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TX Elected Officials Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Well folks the same people pulling the CSCOPE strings are the ones involved in developing the “failed and oft-maligned Robin Hood Plan, and also drafted SB 1 in 1995 which stripped local teachers of control over what they taught. 

So- what am I talking about you might ask? Rider 42 and your Tax Dollars

Did you know…..It is actually worse than we thought. 

Remember the post about the 32 Million Grant given to the TEA (Texas Education Agency) and the ESCs (Education Service Centers) to create TEKS Professional Development materials  “Show Us The Money ~ TEA and ESC” it is actually not 32 Million but 152 Million of your tax dollars. 

Rider 42 provided $152 million for TEA (Texas Education Agency) and the ESCs (Education Service Centers) to create TEKS Professional Development materials for educators K-12 in Science and ELAR for the summer 2010 Professional Development programs called academies.

These are the games those in the Austin Bubble play and your elected officials are in on the game. It is just like what passed in the 83rd legislative session with transportation. They are now going to use your property taxes to build the toll roads and then charge you again to drive on then. 

In education they used your tax dollars to develop an online technology curriculum called CSCOPE and now they are renting that curriculum back to districts paid for with your tax dollars, and THESE ARE THE REPUBLICANS!! 

From Janice VanCleave a Texas Grandma who is uncovering this travesty. 

The 81st Legislature provided  millions of dollars for education via  Rider 42. 

There were two TEKS professional development programs created for educators. 

 1. TEKS Professional Development–$50 million

2. TEKS Academies –$30 million

How are these two programs different?

Other specific funding targets under SSI include: 

  • training for campus and district leaders ($5 million), 
  • college preparation assessments ($13.75 million), 
  • Algebra I Readiness initiatives ($50 million) and 
  • college readiness grants ($25 million). 

TESCCC claims that teachers and administrators ask the ESCs to create the CSCOPE program. According to TESCCC, these requests were due to not understanding the TEKS. 

This would not be true had the teachers attended the Rider 42 Teks training. 

Are the ESCs able to function as a vendor, selling CSCOPE and with equal dedication and focus use grant money to provide Free professional development for educators?

If educators were not prepared to use the TEKS in 2010-2011 –2011-2012 and 2012-203, 

is it because the ESCs are more focused on selling CSCOPE than giving free professional development academies?

These are the questions the TESCCC must answer before anyone including Tx. Sen. Tommy Williams taps into the Rainy Day for for Education.  

There will be much more coming out on this issue. They are BUSTED!! Thank you Janice VanCleave for uncovering Corruption in Texas Education!! 

Below is just a sample…….. By Janice VanCleave

The Rider 42 grant of $152 million was also to be used to prepare training materials so Training of Trainers (TOT) could be done. Thus, qualified trainers would then present the Rider 42 PD Academies for teachers. According to a report on the TEA website, about 1,300 people were trained but only 44% of them ever presented to teachers.

I believe what the directors of CSCOPE have done is to imitate the Rider 42 TEKS PD materials.

The authors of the K-4 CSCOPE science didn’t understand what they read and made some big errors in the CSCOPE science lessons.

One of the biggest errors found so far in CSCOPE is that the authors as well as every CSCOPE director that I have heard speak about CSCOPE do not understand the vertical alignment objective. Now that I have read the TEKS PD training materials, I do understand that it is not just a list of three grades showing the TEKS. Because the CSCOPE authors misinterpreted the information about vertical alignment, they included material, such as parallel and series circuits to be learned by 5th graders when it is a TEKS for physics. Basically here is how they messed up. In vertical alignment, TEA grouped K-4 science materials for the training. Thus, to get a feel for how a topic builds from K-4 and through the next grades with the final objective being that students would be prepared to understand that same TEKS at the level presented in physics. For example, simple electricity idea in K, then 1st, and on to 4th where kids learn about circuits and that for a flashlight to work there has to be a power source, conducting wire and a light bulb. But the bulb doesn’t glow unless a path is formed to allow the electric energy to flow around and around (closed path-closed circuit). It is very simple and can be taught to 2nd graders –I’ve done it.

Now comes the rigor part–which CSCOPE authors don’t have a clue about. Since they copied ideas from the TEKS PD academia materials they loudly claim that CSCOPE has vertical alignment and rigor. I can show that CSCOPE lessons have neither.

Example: The Rigor, which is really just using what you have learned to interpret something a bit more complex.

The diagram is for a parallel circuit in physics. Where the wires are separated should be a switch that is open. If 4th graders are properly taught closed circuits, they know nothing about parallel circuits but can use their knowledge to figure out that only bulb A is going to glow. A more complicated diagram of this is shown during the TEKS PD academies. The goal is for the elementary teacher to have an idea why it is important for kids to be able to distinguish between a closed and an open circuit. Science becomes more than just learning for a test. In fact the fallacy of education is that tests are given and the next topic is started. Test need to be an assessment of what kids do and do not understand. If kids are building their education framework, they cannot afford to leave out some of the bricks. Not every framework is the same, some more elaborate and some simple, but all should be the very best that each child can do and should not be missing parts.

 

CSCOPE gave the diagram of a parallel circuit in the Rider K-4 PD and included parallel circuits in the 5th grade science materials. I complained and complained and now the revised CSCOPE science lesson on electricity doesn’t have the parallel circuit handout, but they forgot to remove the parallel and series script from the lesson. Make note:

CSCOPE’s revised science lessons are for the most part worse than before.

1. Took out all online reference materials for teachers.

2. Took out handouts that were reviewed and found incorrect–

They did not make changes to the teacher’s script so now there is no handout for the kids and the script refers to the handout.

Even changes in the assessments are hit and miss with reported materials removed but additions are incorrect in some cases.

It will not matter if every CSCOPE lessons is reviewed because the same attitude of “get it fixed and back on sale as soon as possible” is the objective of the TESCCC directors.

One more point about the ESCs using Rider 42 grant money–According to the evaluation of the TEKS PD Academies and TOT, the ESCs admitted that they did not make any special effort to promote the PDs. In 2009-2010, All 20 ESCs received about $50 million.

YES!!! $50 million that paid them for producing teacher training materials as well as presenting the PDs to educators during the 2010 PD Academies.

I find this a flagrant misuse of funds. Teachers went from using TAKS to TEKS in science and ELAR and money for assisting them to make this transition was given to the ESCs and no special announcements were made about the summer academies.

After reading the K-4 science materials that teachers in these grades would have seen before starting the 2010-2011 school year it is clear a full investigation of the ESCs is needed and it is needed today. The idea of putting off their evaluation for years is only to give them time to cook the books.

I am very angry at the ESCs for cheating our educators out of the science training. Instead, 19 of the 20 ESCs made no effort to announce that the summer science and ELAR programs were very special–VERY SPECIAL. My evaluation of the content of the K-4 science TEKs academy PD provides a teaching style and philosophy that all teachers would embrace. I am a veteran teacher and I picked up lots of new ways to teach different science concepts. K-4 teachers would have soaked up this information and there would never have been any concerns about TEKS and rigor.

 

Instead of promoting free TEKS Rider 42 Academies–The TESCCC was busy promoting the idea that teachers needed help with the new TEKS. Teachers do not understand how to make their lessons have rigor. TESCCC promoted the idea that textbooks were aligned with TAKS and were worthless.. EVEN new TEKS aligned textbooks should not be purchased because they could not be updated every day like an online program, such as CSCOPE.

So, instead of providing a quality program for teachers -a free to the teacher program–the ESCs down played the TEKS Academies and sold a product that had been quickly thrown together so it could be aligned with the TEKS- Master Teachers did not write all the CSCOPE lessons. Parts of CSCOPE was jobbed out– written by graduate students- ESC workers — Parts of CSCOPE were copied from the web, parts from textbooks, etc…..

What the ESCs have done should be a criminal offense. Surely taking the Rider 42 grant money and purposely not using it as specified is illegal. 

 

After reading the above information it makes this video very interesting…..

“There is a lot in this little 2 minute clip. How can the region have a deficit when they are taking in hundreds of thousands and in some cases millions? Also, for those following the NER money trail and rural New York —hear him at the end subtly mention that they recently changed software/computer companies…”

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