You couldn’t be blamed if up to now you looked at this CSCOPE hubbub and dismissed it as mostly just a case of a few fringe loons with Internet connections talking to each other. In fact, the most prominent individual — at least as far as electeds go — up to this point to engage in the CSCOPE hysterics is Texas Senate Education Committee chair Dan Patrick, R-Houston. No surprise there.
That is until Gov. Rick Perry went on Glenn Beck’s radio program Tuesday. There, Perry didn’t fully jump into the faux controversy over CSCOPE, but he also did nothing to disabuse Beck of the conspiracy theories that have been tossed at this curriculum system developed by state-created entities.
Said Beck (video below; CSCOPE exchange begins approximately at 3:00 mark):
“You stood up to Common Core here, which is deadly, deadly to the republic. And then, we happen to get a back door thing called CSCOPE. Could you explain a little bit about why these things are so insidious and what people need to understand? Because it seems to me it is a back door to cut off all rights to parents and to states on anything that has to do with education.”
How about it, Gov. Perry? Beck just called CSCOPE an “insidious” threat to parents and states (if not to the republic itself). What say you?
“Well, it is. It’s of great concern that we’ve seen this effort to bypass oversight by the commission — Michael Williams, (Texas Education Agency) Commissioner — the Legislature, for that matter, because the Legislature is a microcosm of the state. This is a conservative state. And I absolutely agree with education chairman Patrick and TEA Commissioner Williams that we need to ensure there is appropriate transparency, quality control, oversight of the CSCOPE. State Board of Education and these education service center curriculums all need to be very transparent. So there’s an audit process that has formally begun.”
Make what you will about Perry’s answer and how he only addressed CSCOPE’s supposed lack of transparency. But one thing is clear: when confronted with a conspiracy theorist’s assertion that CSCOPE is a plot to destroy the country, he said nothing to the contrary.
Here’s the video:
Why?
Why is Glenn Beck even relevant?
Ugh.
Rick Perry spoke with Glenn Beck and this did not generate a world-engulfing Black Hole of Stupidity?
Any indication that he has read it?
Yes, Glenn Beck and Rick Perry are both idiots whose crazy opinions shouldn’t be taken seriously by educated and rational people. Yes, Perry did not explicitly agree with Beck that CSCOPE is “insidious” and “deadly to the Republic,” but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe that. I’m sure he does, since all of his political cronies and supporters believe that.
Let me address CSCOPE’s “supposed lack of transparency.” Perry questions its lack of transparency and he is correct to do so. CSCOPE is not transparent. When the controversy started, I tried to review CSCOPE myself since it is a curriculum and that’s what I know and study. But I couldn’t. CSCOPE is not available to the public. Here’s what CSCOPE says in its FAQs:
Who can purchase a license to access the online CSCOPE system and/or content?
Designed to be most effectively implemented as a systemic process, CSCOPE is only available to school districts in Texas through TESCCC-member ESCs. There are special considerations under the state accountability system that may apply to individual campus licensing. CSCOPE is not available for purchase by individuals.
Not only can CSCOPE not be purchased by individuals, it can’t be reviewed by individuals. That’s one reason this Tea Party-inspired controversy has so much force. Without independent information, no one can refute the political radicals’ claims, crazy and misguided though they are. I had to give up, since I don’t make claims myself about things for which I have no evidence. The few “controversial” snippets of the CSCOPE curriculum I was able to read (apparently because they had been leaked), were obvious (obvious to me, anyway) attempts to teach critical thinking to students. As everyone knows, Tea Party Radical Religious Right Republicans (i.e. Texas Republicans) hate critical thinking because it teaches children to investigate claims and question statements by authorities, and in Texas that’s bad, since essentially all of our state’s leading public officials are misguided and irresponsible authorities whose every utterance and action deserves to be questioned. That’s why our state has so many counter-productive, mean-spirited, bigoted, hateful, and ignorant policies–because the Republican authorities who promulgate them lack the skills for critical thinking and rely instead on their own emotional, hopeful, and wishful thinking and their own irrational biases and bigotries.
So I support Gov. Rick Perry’s call for more transparency. Right now, a stacked hand-picked TEA panel is auditing CSCOPE. How will I or anyone else be able to question or criticize this panel’s judgment about CSCOPE without independent information? SBOE members and TEA officers have access to the entire CSCOPE curriculum. I would like that access, too, and I’m sure many other informed, responsible educators and curriculum experts would also.
I would hope it’s a threat… but we don’t have a republic… we have a militarized, corporatized failing empire – that needs a complete redoing…
I guess what most people are forgetting it that any school who uses CSCOPE is doing so because the LOCAL DISTRICT CHOICE TO! It is not mandated that any school district use it. Most districts have found it easier and cheaper to use CSCOPE than develop their own curriculum, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. There are plenty of schools who DON’T use CSCOPE!
Frank,
It is a local district choice that many districts are making because they believe it is the only reasonable way to “teach to the test” for STAAR tests. STAAR tests accomplish little good yet continue to be a state mandate. The way I see it, districts believe they have little choice but to use CSCOPE, virtually state dictated also. State regulated STAAR testing and Charters can best be described by the phrase “Crony Capitalism.”