Many Public Schools In Texas Are Teaching..."Allah Is The Almighty God"...Should This Be Allowed.????

Texas teaching 'Allah is the Almighty God'

In the 70 percent of Texas public schools where a private curriculum has been installed, students are learning the “fact” that “Allah is the Almighty God,” charge critics of a new online curriculum that already is facing condemnation for its secrecy and restrictions on oversight.

The program, called CSCOPE, is a private venture operating under the umbrella of the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative, whose incorporation documents state its independence from the State Board of Education of the Texas Education Agency.

Other reports previously have raised alarm over the curriculum’s depiction of the Boston Tea Party as a terrorist act on par with the 9/11 attack.

According to documentation that has leaked out, the program describes the Boston Tea Party this way: “A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.”

There also have been reports that the curriculum – contrary to recent Supreme Court rulings – says the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right to bear arms, is limited to state-run organizations.

“The collective right’s advocates believed that the Second Amendment did not apply to individuals; rather it recognized the right of a state to arm its militia. It recognized limited individual rights only when it was exercised by members of a functioning, organized militia while actively participating in the militia’s activities.”

Separately but in a related issue, Attorney General Greg Abbott has released an opinion that is being is being quoted by critics as disqualifying Ratliff from the state board because of his connections to companies doing business with schools in Texas.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/texas-teaching-allah-is-the-almigh...

The “parent portal” provided on the public portion of CSCOPE’s website has not allayed critics’ concerns. Some of the lessons leaked to the public have contained wide disparities from the summary pages viewable in the public section of CSCOPE’s website.

Ratliff defends this dichotomy by saying that, like iTunes or any other “business,” some things must be placed behind a “pay wall” as part of a business plan. Ratliff claims that CSCOPE is created by “teachers, for teachers.”

But teachers must sign a gag order when required to use CSCOPE in their classrooms.

Complicating the issue is the fact that school districts usually purchase CSCOPE with state tax dollars.

While Ratliff calls the curriculum “instructional material” he said state oversight wouldn’t help, and “I would much rather have 7,000 locally elected school board members decide what content is best for their students, not the 15-member SBOE. Allowing CSCOPE to be developed and implemented at the local level is the ‘local control’ Texans say we want. Injecting SBOE oversight into this would shift us into a ‘controlling the locals’ approach.”

Critics say that’s not the way the system is set up, and CSCOPE actually ends local input since it prevents, on penalty of copyright litigation, distribution of its content to parents.

A vocal critic has been Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle, a Republican

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One of the teachers who doesn’t like CSCOPE is Kimberly Thomas, an English teacher with 13 years of experience. She said administrators claim it raises the bar, but she believes it dilutes the curriculum.

“I have not talked to a single teacher who likes this program. I am being very serious about it,” she said.

First-year teachers enjoy having the scope and sequence laid out for them in detail and having ideas on how to approach teaching a skill, but they don’t like the lesson plans, said Thomas, who is not a Lubbock teacher and requested her school district not be identified.

The lesson plans are horrible, fraught with mistakes and unrealistic, she said. An example she gave regarded teaching inference and tone in literature, and the lesson plan was for students to pull out cell phones and play their ring tones with the rest of the class inferring why they chose those ring tones.

Parents should be concerned about what their kids are being taught under CSCOPE, she said.

“Their students are not going to be prepared. It is a watered-down curriculum, and when their kids get to college, they are going to be lost,” Thomas said.

She also doesn’t buy the selling point that CSCOPE will help prepare students for STAAR tests.

“No one has even seen STAAR tests yet. To say CSCOPE prepares for that is ridiculous,” she said.
http://lubbockonline.com/education/2011-03-10/implementing-cs...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSCOPE_(education)

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