CSCOPE Works to Improve Public Understanding of its Curriculum Management System
CSCOPE, developed by the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative (TESCCC) and sold by Texas Regional Education Service Centers (ESCs), is the curriculum management tool of choice for 875 school districts, charter schools, and private schools in Texas. It is aligned with the state standards adopted by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) and assist educators in covering all standards within the academic year. CSCOPE is completely customizable at the district, campus, and teacher level to meet the unique needs of students and communities. The CSCOPE system’s unique and innovative design allows educators to modify or adapt CSCOPE content, create their own content, and incorporate district-approved resources, such as textbooks. This allows the instructor to maintain their authority in directing the learning environment of the classroom and individualizes a student’s learning.
CSCOPE is designed to serve as a teacher resource and is not intended to be accessed by students. Any content in the CSCOPE system is only directly accessible to teachers and designated district personnel. However, a teacher at their discretion may choose to share certain content with students. Parents may access CSCOPE content by contacting their child’s teacher or school district (more on parent access below).
CSCOPE Promotes Texas Standards
CSCOPE was developed by Texas teachers; for Texas schools; to benefit Texas students. In no way is it based on, or affiliated with, the Common Core curriculum, a set of national standards used in other states. CSCOPE is only available to public school districts, charter schools, or private schools in Texas. The TESCCC does not provide curriculum management services to any other state. The Governing Board and development team take pride in creatinga curriculum that is aligned to Texas standards and focused on improving education in Texas.
The purpose of this memorandum is to address misconceptions that have arisen about specific lessons and to assure teachers, parents and everyone interested in improving education in Texas that we are listening to their concerns and will do our best to be accessible and responsive.
Does CSCOPE Promote Islam?
Absolutely not.This misunderstandingis based on lesson content that has been taken completely out of context. CSCOPE teaches the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) which are adopted by the 15 members of the SBOE. A number of the TEKS call for students to learn about and compare the various world religions. One of the religions addressed is Islam and there is a lesson on the founding principles and history of the religion; just as there are for Christianity, Judaism, and other major world religions. One part of the lesson on the basic tenants of Islam has been presented as what students are to learn about all religions, when in fact it simply describes what Muslims believe and what Islam teaches.
What is the background behind this issue?
The lesson under scrutiny was posted on the internet, and it contained a power point with the descriptors of what Muslims believe and what Islam teaches. This lesson and power point is no longer in CSCOPE. When new state standards were adopted, the CSCOPE curriculum for social studies was completely revamped to reflect the new standards with new lessons.
What do the TEKS say?
The current social studies standards1, approved by the State Board of Education (SBOE) of Texas in 2010, contain a series of expectations about the study of world religions. Below are some examples where the state has required that students are able to:
World History Studies (23A)… describe the historical origins, central ideas, and spread of major religious and philosophical traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and the development of monotheism.
World Geography Studies (17A)… describe and compare patterns of culture such as language, religion, land use, education, and customs that make specific regions of the world distinctive.
World Geography Studies (17B)… describe major world religions, including animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism, and their spatial distribution.
What CSCOPE Exemplar Lesson is used to teach these TEKS:
World History
Social Studies
Unit: 04B
Lesson: 01
Suggested Duration: 3 days
How did TESCCC respond?
The TEKS and World Religions /What about the accusations that CSCOPE believes the Boston Tea Party patriots were terrorists?
Again, absolutely not. The original lesson that is being misinterpreted was about terrorism and how perspective can shape one’s views of an act,in this case how King George III and others from Great Britain might have viewed activities like dumping tea into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party, though not named, was described and students were asked to respond on how they view what happened. The goal of the lesson was to take an incident well known by students and that was universally viewed as a patriotic event in American history and challenge students to hear about it from a differing perspective. In hindsight, the TESCCC acknowledges a different example would have been a better choice and would not have risked the misunderstanding about its intent. Rest assured that even in the original version students were certainly not taught that the Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorism.
One of CSCOPE’s commitments is to listen to our users and to be responsive to their needs. It is worth noting;neither the lesson on Islam, nor the terrorism lessonever received any feedback or complaints from CSCOPE users. However, both lessons were no longer aligned with state standards, so they were removed in a timely fashion. They initially continued to be postedas a resource, as were all former social studies lessons, at the request of school districts. Again, we take pride in being responsive to the districts that we serve. (To view both the Islam and Terrorism lesson in their original form, please visit
What is the background behind this accusation?
Glen Beck spent almost 10 minutes on his radio show discussing CSCOPE. He made the same accusations as our detractors (propaganda for Islam, calling the Boston Tea Party terrorist, murky finances, ect.) and is planning to do a much longer segment on Monday. The Blaze, an online publication that is associated with Glen Beck, was reporting with him and is planning a longer expose on Monday as well. They commented that Gov. Perry was not aware of CSCOPE and Glen Beck responded that he will make sure that the Governor knows. You can watch the full discussion by going here:
The Blaze Article:
What CSCOPE Exemplar Lesson iswas used to teach the TEKS?
The old lesson has been removed from the CSCOPE curriculum because it is no longer aligned to the new state standards for social studies. TESCCC posted the INACTIVE lesson for the public to view:
How did TESCCC respond?
Facts about CSCOPE Lesson on the Boston Tea Party /Additional Facts about CSCOPE Lesson on the Boston Tea Party /
What Steps isCSCOPE Taking to Broaden Parent Access and Support Parental Involvement?
It has always been the intention of the TESCCC to allow teachers and school districts to share CSCOPE content with parents. That is a parent’s right and the TESCCC strongly encourages parents to play an active role in their child’s education. However, it was brought to the attention of the TESCCC that the user agreement teachers accept before accessing the site had language that was misinterpreted and had created confusion for our districts. To clarify this, the TESCCC has taken the following steps to remove any real or perceived barriers to parent access:
- Amended the user agreement to specifically state that districts may share or post any content that they feel is helpfulto assist parents in better understanding what their child is learning.(This does not includetests and answer keys as you can understand.)
- Allow teachers to post handouts, worksheets, or lessons that they believe are beneficial for students to view, on their classroom website. They may also make hardcopies for parents to view. (On January 23, the Governing Board clarified that each district may establish their own policies and procedures for parental access.)
- Allow parents direct access to the site by coordinating a time with their child’s school. The TESCCC will continue working with CSCOPE schools on improving direct parent access and assist them in establishing set procedures prior to the start of the 2013-2014 school year.
- Most exciting, in order to be responsive to parents, the TESCCC is currently developing a completely new Parent Resource Site that will provide more information to parents than ever before. The new site will include unit summaries, key terms students would be learning, and items related to student performance in the unit.It is the goal of the TESCCC that these elements are available starting for the fifth six weeks of this school year. The TESCCC will be collecting feedback throughout the remainder of the school year and will work to improve the site prior to the 2013-2014 school year.
CSCOPE Parent Portal site:
Is it acceptable for teachers and educators to discuss CSCOPE material?
Of course. The idea that teachers are prohibited from discussing CSCOPE content is another misconception. Teachers benefit from collaboration and it is important that they are allowed to discuss CSCOPE content with their peers in an effort to improve the education of all students. As was stated above, CSCOPE was designed with the teacher in mind and teachers are encouraged to work with their peers to improve the content or to add their own lessons and self-created content. We are also communicating with our colleagues in the schools to reassure them that there is nothing prohibiting them from discussing CSCOPE content or lessons with others.
Why can’t CSCOPE make all lessons available to the general public?
There are several reasons. We believe that this would actually undercut a teacher’s ability to customize a lesson to best serve the students in their classroom. The teacher should always be a parent’s primary contact in discovering what resources are being used in the learning environment. Ultimately, the teacher and district decides if a CSCOPE lesson will be used in full, in part or not at all. Thisdecision is based on the best interest of their students and the teacher must be allowed to use their skills and judgment to determine how to best educate their students. The TESCCC does not wish to do anything that could generate confusion among parents and teachers. The TESCCC strongly believes and supports local decision making within school districts and insist that the member districts have the ability to release any CSCOPE content themselves, since it will more accurately reflect the instruction going on in that specific community. However, as noted above, we are redesigning theParent Resource Site, and pledge to read each comment from parents and to reassess and report to the public in six months.
CSCOPE Values Transparency
In effort to continue our goal of being a transparent organization, the TESCCC will be taking additional steps to those mentioned above to broaden the availability of CSCOPE materials. Please continue to check our website, for additional information or to provide feedback on how we can continue to improve.
What is the latest issue?
TWO email messages were delivered to an ESC-2 email address, referencing a lesson about socialism:
February 6thMy grandparents were a farmers and had a little store in western part of Ukraine in 1946. One day Stalin's people came to their house and ordered that in one hour they have to be ready to leave. For Siberia. My mom was 7 at that time and she was left on strangers. She never saw her parents again.
Do you know why they were sent to Siberia? They had little bit more than other people in a village. They worked little bit harder than other. So they have to not just share but everything had to be taken away for collectivization purpose.
You had to be the same as everybody else. Poor, but same.
Its a socialism.
Please, don't teach kids about "new socialist nation" ,please, that red flag is red with blood of millions of innocent people like my grandparents.
My mom died with broken heart. Every day she would walk along the street and see HER house.House that was built by her dad,where she spent first 7 years of her life,from which she was taken away one day and which was never return to her.
Guess who had resided in that house after? The head of county communist party.
February 4th
I wanted to write and voice my extreme concern regarding your CScope curriculum being used across the State of Texas. The curriculum reportedlyincludes a lesson plan for 6th gradersinstructing students to create a flag for a new socialist nation using symbolism to represent aspects of socialism/communism.
I have recently discovered that the Association of Teacher Educators are meeting this February in Atlanta and the guest speaker for that event is Bill Ayers. He is a known 1960's domestic terrorist and known socialist/marxist.
Can you please explain to me where this radical socialist training is coming from? This agenda has NO place in Texas classrooms. I will make sure all of my friends and neighbors are made aware of what our educators are attempting to teach our kids.
What do the TEKS say?
The State Board of Education requires students to learn the following economic systems in World History:
WH.18: Economics. The student understands the historical origins of contemporary economic systems and the benefits of free enterprise in world history. The student is expected to:
- WH.18A: Identify the historical origins and characteristics of the free enterprise system, including the contributions of Adam Smith, especially the influence of his ideas found in The Wealth of Nations.
- WH.18B: Identify the historic origins and characteristics of communism, including the influences of Karl Marx.
- WH.18C: Identify the historical origins and characteristics of socialism.
Furthermore, the State Board of Education establishes student expectations that focus on social studies skills. For the World History unit referenced above, the following social studies skills are included:
WH.30: Economics: The student communicates in written, oral, and visual forms. The student is expected to:
- WH.30C: Interpret and create written, oral, and visual presentations of social studies information.
What CSCOPE Exemplar Lesson is used to teach these TEKS:
Lesson Synopsis:
This lesson focuses on the economic systems: free enterprise, socialism and communism. Through the use of a variety of instructional strategies and a narrative, students are able to gain a better understanding of the history and principles of these economic systems.
World History
Social Studies
Unit: 06
Lesson: 02
Suggested Duration: 6 days
How did TESCCC respond?
CSCOPE and the Free Market /