Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Dewhurst One-Ups Patrick

In his never-ending effort not to “politicize” the  “fight” against adoption of CSCOPE lesson plans in Texas, David Dewhurst has joined in on the “Battle of Llano ISD” in the TEA Party’s assault on the public domain lesson plan system, a system that I have indicated that I do not use in a previous posting, but one that has offers ready-to-use lessons, and more importantly, correct ready-to-use lessons in other core areas.
 
In other words, the politicization of lesson plans developed by the State of Texas for use in the State of Texas by Texas teachers for Texas schoolchildren, to further the political careers of David Dewhurst and Dan Patrick. And with the help of the TEA Party, which can plant people with posters at any venue, CSCOPE is being challenged wherever a TEA Party organization can be whipped into a frenzy.
But David Dewhurst has just one-upped Dan Patrick. CSCOPE is small potatoes. CSCOPE was written by teams of Regional specialists in Texas. Trying to draw a direct line between CSCOPE lessons and advocates of atheistic communism is a huge undertaking. Especially when one envisions the archetypal authoress of a typical CSCOPE lesson plan: a blue-haired retiree in a pearl necklace supplementing her TRS income with extra income - bones thrown to her by Texas Regional Education Center bosses.
Dewhurst has joined with a group that has widened the anti-CSCOPE protest to include not only CSCOPE, but also the true enemy of education in Texas: Common Core.
Common Core is a set of instructional plans written by those working for President Obama. Common Core is therefore the REAL ENEMY. So David Dewhurst has joined a protest that has effectively rewritten the protest from one against CSCOPE to one against” CSCOPE/Common Core.”
From the Texas Observer, quoting a local anti-CSCOPE/Common Core spokeswoman
“If we allow our public schools to be taken over by the Common Core/CSCOPE philosophy of education they will fail. Charter Public and Private schools will no doubt fill in the gap. The challenge is these schools are run by appointed boards and they are beholden to who provides the grant money. Local elected school boards will be no more. The gift of earning that vote by a local school board giving freedom and control to parents and teachers in the community will be no more. Our American System will be effectively dismantled from the ground up. School Choice then becomes no choice.

“Today Dewhurst thanked Linahan and other anti-CSCOPE activists for their efforts, and said the restraining order against Llano ISD is evidence that ”the active participation of citizens” remains critical to our democracy.”
Nice, huh? A win-win for the TEA Party. If Obama gets his Common Core agenda in Texas, Texas schools will fail and it will be up to private schools to “fill in the gap.”
Oh yeah, did I mention that the TEA Party agenda includes the defunding of all public education?
Well I have news for these people. National standards have been a part of Texas education since 1990. In 1990 the American Association for the Advancement of Science produced a national science curriculum. Now there is no agency to distribute this curriculum. Education is a state function. But the AAAS curriculum is part of every state curriculum nonetheless. But only because it was the only thing out there, and why reinvent the wheel?
A national education curriculum is already with us, and has been with us for over 30 years.
Reinvent that.
 

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