Thank you for the article in last week’s Hays Free Press on the CSCOPE curriculum in Hays CISD. I would like to clarify and expand upon a couple of statements attributed to me in the article.
I was quoted as saying “For me, CSCOPE is great.” To give that statement a little more context, in my job at Lehman High School, I provide academic support for students in grades 9-12 in all academic subjects. Using CSCOPE as a curriculum tool allows me to keep up with what students are studying in any subject or grade level at any given time, and that is a tremendous help in my work. As the president of a large educator group, however, I do frequently hear from teachers who have been experiencing varying levels of frustration in implementing and using CSOPE in their own programs. Many of these experiences were documented in the article.
The article also indicated that I believe CSCOPE “…is an idea whose time has come.” While I do believe that the concept of a collaborative, dynamic, relevant curriculum tool is an idea whose time has come, we are clearly not yet there with CSCOPE. I appreciate the fact that the CSCOPE developers are working on “major revisions” and I hope that these changes and revisions will bring CSCOPE closer to being the effective curriculum tool that we need.
Thanks for your continuing coverage of local education issues.
Steve Thompson
President
Hays Association of Texas Professional Educators
