Pearson Common Core Expert: ‘Was George Washington Any Different From Palestinian Terrorists…?’

By Danette Clark

This article can also be found at EAGnews.org.

“Was George Washington any different from Palestinian terrorists trying to protect their country?”

“Was Jefferson a hypocrite? Did he really think of a slave as a sub-human while writing the Declaration of Independence?”

These questions were written for use in the classroom by Grant Wiggins, a Pearson Education author, partner, and Common Core professional development trainer.

In partnership with the Council of Chief State School Officers, Pearson Education provides lessons, texts, professional development, and other resources to states implementing the Common Core State Standards.

Wiggins is one of several educators and authors who provide instruction via Pearson Common Core webinars.

James Rubenstein, author of, The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography, is also employed by Pearson.

Last year, it was reported that parents in Tennessee’s Williamson County School District were calling for removal of Rubenstein’s book, a resource for Advanced Placement Human Geography courses, because of its anti-semitic content.

As reported:

“…the book… contains the question, “If a Palestinian suicide bomber kills several dozen Israeli teenagers in a Jerusalem restaurant, is that an act of terrorism or wartime retaliation against Israeli government policies and army actions?”

In this Pearson Common Core webinar, Grant Wiggins explains “how issues of backward transfer relate to the Common Core”.

‘Backward transfer’ (also referred to as ‘backward design’ or ‘planning backwards’) is part of the Understanding by Design framework for curriculum, assessment, and learning created by Wiggins and co-author, Jay McTighe.

As explained in The Real History of Common Core: Black Helicopters…’, Common Core’s Achieve, Inc. Far From Bi-Partisan, and Carnegie Corporation: From Philanthropy to Frightening Control to Common Core, the Coalition of Essential Schools is the whole-child progressive indoctrination reform behind the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Wiggins and McTighe have worked with the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) for many years as research scholars, studying CES method, pedagogy, and curriculum, and incorporating them into the creation of their own curriculum and instruction design.

A staple of CES reform has long been the use of ‘big ideas’ and ‘essential questions’ to identify desired results of teacher instruction. Stage one of Wiggins and McTighe’s backward design process, which Pearson recently committed to integrating into all new programs, is identifying those essential questions.

The Common Core standards call for students to think critically about the world around them, and essential questions do just that.

For example, at a school founded and led by CES co-founder and Marxist-socialist, Deborah Meier, questions like, “Whose country is this, anyway?”, are considered “higher-level” essential questions.

According to Meier herself in this recent post, Who Owns America, America doesn’t belong to us, nor does Israel belong to the Israelis.

With the recent influx of liberal minded educators (also by design) and biased Common Core aligned texts and lessons from Pearson, Crayola, Discovery, and other CCSSO partner organizations, we see these methods of teaching being used more and more to indoctrinate students through Common Core.

Even absent the biased Common Core resources, teaching strategies like backward design and essential questions are effective in imposing the political and moral bias of the educator onto the student.

As Wiggins and McTighe state here, “the questions ARE the core curriculum, the “content” is not.”.

Compare the Wiggins and McTighe lesson plans below to this lesson discovered in Texas that referred to the Boston Tea Party as an act of terrorism, and this one that said the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened because of bad decisions made by America in the past.

In this lesson plan, Wiggins and McTighe phrase the 9/11 question this way:  “9/11 – How and why was it predictable or unpredictable, historically speaking?”

In 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with Pearson to create a “complete, foundational system of instruction built around the Common Core Standards”. Judy Codding, former president and CEO of America’s Choice  was appointed to lead the course development effort at Pearson.

Codding was one of four charter principals who participated in the creation of Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools.

Now, as managing director of the Common Core Initiative at Pearson, Codding, along with several other shameless CES educators, including Wiggins, McTighe, and Pearson Foundation Vice President of Programs Susan Sclafani, are being paid to bring their indoctrination techniques and anti-American views to millions of teachers and students via Common Core.

 

Update / Correction — CSCOPE Curriculum Designer Employed by CCSSO Partner to Aid in Implementing Common Core

By Danette Clark

This is an update (with new information) and a correction to CSCOPE Curriculum Designer Employed by CCSSO Partner to Aid in Implementation of Common Core. 

In response to a couple of inquiries and comments as to whether Grant Wiggins is actually a ‘designer’ of CSCOPE, I decided to look further into Wiggins’ involvement to be certain that I’m not misleading or providing false information.

Although the link I provided in the original post names Wiggins and several others under the title “Beginning and Background of CSCOPE”, it does also say “Research Base” directly above the list of ‘designer’ and ‘developer’ names.

Someone pointed out that they believe this means the CSCOPE development team, after researching ‘best practice’ designs and strategies, chose to use those of Wiggins, McTighe, and others listed in the linked document, for the creation of CSCOPE — not that Wiggins directly contributed to CSCOPE by writing curriculum or designing lesson plans.

That makes perfect sense, and I admit that the document I chose to link to doesn’t effectively back up my claim that Wiggins is ‘one of eight designers… of CSCOPE’.

However, in light of information evidencing Wiggins’ involvement in professional development training for Texas educators both before and after CSCOPE was implemented, coupled with the fact that Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design® framework for curriculum, assessment, and learning was directly incorporated into the design of CSCOPE, I think it would be safe to say that Wiggins had a hand in the design of CSCOPE, and further add that it appears he had a hand in its implementation as well.

With over 1,600 lesson plans at any given time (some conveniently disappearing) and rumors of plagiarism, who can say for certain whose lesson plans or content is being provided through CSCOPE?

If CSCOPE was created using Wiggins’ design framework and he provides professional development to Texas educators that use his design framework, why would it be out of the question for CSCOPE to contain lesson plans created by Wiggins?

The sample lesson below uses ‘questions as curriculum’ and was created by Wiggins and McTighe. Compare this to the CSCOPE lesson that referred to the Boston Tea Party as an act of terrorism.

This lesson plan looks like something that could have been used to teach students at Flour Bluff Intermediate School in Texas that the U.S. may have been a target for terrorism on 9/11 because we hurt other countries by making bad decisions.

More ‘essential questions‘ from Wiggins and McTighe:

• Was George Washington any different from Palestinian terrorists trying to protect their country?

• Was Jefferson a hypocrite? Did he really think of a slave as a sub-human while writing the Declaration of Independence?

Here’s an essential question — With Wiggins acting on behalf of the CCSSO and Pearson to aid educators in implementing Common Core, how can we not expect lessons like these to become the national standard?

CSCOPE Curriculum Designer Employed by CCSSO Partner to Aid in Implementing Common Core

By Danette Clark

An update and correction to this post can be found below.

Grant Wiggins, one of eight designers of curriculum, standards and instruction of the pro-communist Texas CSCOPE curriculum, also provides professional development to aid educators in implementing the national Common Core State Standards.

Pearson, the education service company widely known for publishing textbooks, has partnered with the Council of Chief State School Officers in providing training and other resources to states implementing Common Core.

Through the ‘Pearson Common Core Institute’, Wiggins provides instruction via several Pearson Common Core webinar videos.

In one such webinar, Wiggins discusses “how issues of backward transfer relate to the Common Core”.

‘Backward transfer’ (also commonly referred to as ‘backward design’ or  ‘planning backwards’) is part of the Understanding by Design^® framework for curriculum, assessment, and learning created by Wiggins and co-author, Jay McTighe, also a designer of CSCOPE.

As explained here and here, the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is the Bill Ayers backed progressive education reform movement behind both CSCOPE and Common Core. Linda Darling Hammond, developer of both CSCOPE and Common Core, has worked to implement CES reform for many years.

Grant Wiggins has worked with the Coalition of Essential Schools for many years, studying CES method and pedagogy, and incorporating them into the creation of his own curriculum and instruction design for use in CES schools.

A staple of the CES reform model has long been the use of ‘essential questions’ in identifying desired results of teacher instruction. Stage one of Wiggins and McTighe’s backward design process is identifying essential questions.

In 2011 and 2012, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) partnered with ASCD (the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) to hold statewide summits in several states on the implementation of Common Core.

Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design^® was originally published by ASCD. Read about Texas ASCD’s involvement with the Coalition of Essential Schools and CSCOPE here and here.

Also, read more about Wiggins and others behind the Coalition of Essential Schools at Name Names — The People Behind the Largest Progressive Indoctrination Movement in the U.S.

Update / Correction — CSCOPE Curriculum Designer Employed by CCSSO Partner to Aid in Implementing Common Core.

In response to a couple of inquiries and comments as to whether Grant Wiggins is actually a ‘designer’ of CSCOPE, I decided to look further into Wiggins’ involvement to be certain that I’m not misleading or providing false information.

Although the link I provided in the original post names Wiggins and several others under the title “Beginning and Background of CSCOPE”, it does also say “Research Base” directly above the list of ‘designer’ and ‘developer’ names.

Someone pointed out that they believe this means the CSCOPE development team, after researching ‘best practice’ designs and strategies, chose to use those of Wiggins, McTighe, and others listed in the linked document, for the creation of CSCOPE — not that Wiggins directly contributed to CSCOPE by writing curriculum or designing lesson plans.

That makes perfect sense, and I admit that the document I chose to link to doesn’t effectively back up my claim that Wiggins is ‘one of eight designers… of CSCOPE’.

However, in light of information evidencing Wiggins’ involvement in professional development training for Texas educators both before and after CSCOPE was implemented, coupled with the fact that Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design® framework for curriculum, assessment, and learning was directly incorporated into the design of CSCOPE, I think it would be safe to say that Wiggins had a hand in the design of CSCOPE, and further add that it appears he had a hand in its implementation as well.

With over 1,600 lesson plans at any given time (some conveniently disappearing) and rumors of plagiarism, who can say for certain whose lesson plans or content is being provided through CSCOPE?

If CSCOPE was created using Wiggins’ design framework and he provides professional development to Texas educators that use his design framework, why would it be out of the question for CSCOPE to contain lesson plans created by Wiggins?

The sample lesson below uses ‘questions as curriculum’ and was created by Wiggins and McTighe. Compare this to the CSCOPE lesson that referred to the Boston Tea Party as an act of terrorism.

This lesson plan looks like something that could have been used to teach students at Flour Bluff Intermediate School in Texas that the U.S. may have been a target for terrorism on 9/11 because we hurt other countries by making bad decisions.

More ‘essential questions‘ from Wiggins and McTighe:

• Was George Washington any different from Palestinian terrorists trying to protect their country?

• Was Jefferson a hypocrite? Did he really think of a slave as a sub-human while writing the Declaration of Independence?

Here’s an essential question — With Wiggins acting on behalf of the CCSSO and Pearson to aid educators in implementing Common Core, how can we not expect lessons like these to become the national standard?

These Texas Educators Should Have Some Explaining To Do

By Danette Clark

Now that CSCOPE has been exposed, thanks in large part to the ladies at txcscopereview.com and redhotconservative.com, Texans can start taking out the trash and turning their schools around.

In an attempt to lend a hand to my neighbor state, I’m posting some background information that might help and the names of a few Texas educators who should be made to answer for their involvement in the progressive takeover of Texas schools.

As I wrote in Indoctrination in Texas Schools Long Before CSCOPE, radical educators infiltrated several Texas school districts many years ago.

One of the state’s largest threats is Texas ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), which opened in 1947. Today, Texas ASCD partners with many liberal education organizations, including the Houston Annenberg Challenge, CES Small Schools Project, and Communities in Schools of Texas.

Working in partnership with the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and other universities, ASCD helps recruit and train new liberal educators for placement in K-12 schools.

ASCD promotes curriculum that is designed around “essential questions”, a teaching strategy created by Theodore Sizer.

Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), which started out with only twelve schools in 1984, is now a national hub for thousands of progressive educators and hundreds of organizations.

ASCD is one of the largest and most powerful of those organizations.  An ASCD office can be found in 49 states in the U.S.

Below is a list of Texas educators that have been working directly with Texas ASCD, whose mission it is to place radical educators and pro-communist curricula into classroom.

Texas ASCD Regional Affiliates:

•Rio Grande Valley (Region 1) – Arminda Lozano (Edinburg CISD)
•Coastal Bend (Region 2) –  Abigayle Barton (Corpus Christi ISD)
•Crossroads Area (Region 3 ) – Gayle Parenica (Region 3)
•Houston Suburban (Region 4) – Mary Jadloski (Cypress-Fairbanks ISD)
•Sabine – Neches (Region 5) – D’Lana Barbay (Vidor ISD)
•Piney Woods (Region 7) – Tasha Barker (Lindale ISD)
•North Central (Region 10) – Katie Kordel (Frisco ISD)
•Les Evans (Region 11) – Lisa Young (Carroll ISD)
•Central Texas (Region 12) – Vickie Dean (Connally ISD)
•Capital Area (Region 13) – Diana Sustaita (Pflugerville ISD)
•West Central Texas (Region 14) – Paula Kinslow (Clyde ISD)
•Panhandle (Region 16) – Brenda Foster (Region 16)
•West Texas (Region 17) – Shawn Bearden (Abernathy ISD)
•Paso del Norte (Region 19) – Blanca Lopez
•Alamo Area (Region 20) – Frank Alfaro (Alamo Heights ISD)

Texas ASCD Regional Contacts:

•Region 6 – Sandy Szako
•Region 8 – Lori Ables (Texarkana ISD)
•Region 9 – Ashley Stewart (Graham ISD)
•Region 15 – Ann Ligon Moore (Brady ISD)
•Region 18 – Carolyn Gonzalez (Ector County ISD)

Read more about Texas ASCD and the Coalition of Essential Schools at What Are They Learning? and go to Schools, Districts & Organizations Indoctrinating in Your State to see what’s going on in your area.