Bullying Educators: CSCOPE (Part 3)

I should be doing other things.  I should be writing Board Notes, or checking on the new gym, or scanning the FEMA proposed guidelines, etc. etc.  However, I have a terrible confession to make:  I am a human being and a professional educator.  I am so upset by the turn of events yesterday regarding CSCOPE that I must take keyboard in hand to vent and explain so that I do not bust, and so that I can return to the work I should be doing.

Senator Dan Patrick announced yesterday with a certain degree of glee that CSCOPE had agreed to remove the exemplar lessons from its software.  He pushed for this.  He wanted this.  He announced elsewhere that this was the end of the CSCOPE era.  I am appalled, horrified and aghast.

I do not feel this way because I think CSCOPE is perfect.  I do not feel this way because I believe that all the lessons are appropriate, well thought out, or appropriately aligned.  I do not feel this way because I own stock in CSCOPE.  I am appalled that a state senator with a background in radio has taken it upon himself to bully a professionally developed and widely used curriculum management tool so that it better reflects his own values.  That is unspeakable.  That borders on McCarthyism.

835 of the 1000+ school districts in Texas use CSCOPE.  Each district chose and implemented CSCOPE in different ways.  We did not mandate that teachers use the lessons.  Some districts did.  Teachers in those districts complained about the lessons.  Teachers in our district complained about the lessons, but we did it via CSCOPE input channels and not on websites.  The lessons were written by educators, good hearted folks who spent time drafting lessons they hoped would align with the scope and sequence.  Some of the  1600 some odd lessons are great.  Some are not.  In testimony before Senator Patrick opponents complained that 7 lessons were anti-American and anti-Christian.  Really?  Texas educators writing lessons that are anti-American and anti-Christian?  No way.  Each of these lessons encouraged kids to think, to look at issues from multiple angles, to become an educated person.  Evidently this is not allowed.

There are a host of mechanisms in CSCOPE for review and edit of the lessons and unit exams.  Senator Patrick did not recommend that CSCOPE review and repair the questionable lessons.  He did not recommend that educators re-think some of the lesson content.  At first he pushed the requirement that the State Board of Education conduct a review of the lessons.  That was not good enough.  He set out to remove those lessons, all of them, for the few that some thought were questionable.  I believe he set out to abolish CSCOPE.

I find it incredibly scary that a non-educator with political power can dictate what instructional resources thousands of Texas teachers can access.  I especially find it scary if the reason to eliminate a resource is because of a political perspective that does not allow for other points of view.  If a single, non-educator, politician has that kind of power in Texas I wonder how free we really are as a profession to make our own decisions regarding instruction that best serves our kids.  In fact, I wonder how free we are to think at all in ways that are not consistent with his party line.  Not too free, it appears to me. 

And if the political rationale for eliminating the lessons in our adopted curriculum management program was to avoid indoctrination of our kids, what shall we call it when only one point of view, their point of view, is allowed to be taught?

If the rationale is not ideology but is economic gain then I am even more upset!

Now, back to work.