A LYS Superintendent writes the following:

SC,

I’m lamenting the crippling blow inflicted on CSCOPE.  I’m sorry to see this happen and I know this is not the ESCs’ wish. It’s all part of a public school witch-hunt.

So last session, Senator Dan Patrick votes to strip away our funding, which requires us to cut the very staff that might have had some time to write a little curriculum, votes to increase the number of accountability tests (when there was no money). Now this session he fools us with a few more bucks added back this session (though not as much as was cut). Then he conducts a witch-hunt over a handful of lessons, out of over 1,600, in order to eliminate an inexpensive way for small to mid-sized districts to have a curriculum.  Then he and his cronies celebrate that loss…. amazing.  
Then he votes to eliminate a few tests, but keep ALL the TEKS testable.  But now with CSCOPE weakened we are back to relying on textbooks, which are at best, TEKS correlated.  Which makes passing Texas accountability tests even more difficult.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist… but there is a conspiracy to make public school look like they are failing.

I’m waiting to see which private company “steps up” with a CSCOPE replacement product that is FAR more expensive to fill the gap. Any guesses on which Senators and Representatives will “consult” and lobby for those very same private companies after they leave governmental service (the Shapiro shuffle)?

As a district we have spent a year and a half spent aligning lessons to our mini-assessments and now it’s all gone.  I would like to thank Senator Patrick and his Far Right colleagues for allowing us the opportunity to re-organize staff to write lessons for 2013-14 implementation. There is nothing like re-inventing the wheel with not enough staff, time and money.  And the long overdue staff salary increases that we were planning on?  Now we get to reduce them in order to have funds to get a new lesson bank in place.

But this session wasn’t a complete loss, our Senators and Representatives did vote to increase their pensions.  As long as you don’t think about it, that seems fair.

Think. Work. Achieve. Your turn…

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