By Alice Linahan | 03.13.2015
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Big Hat Tip to Texas Senator Donna Campbell for filing SB 1711 which mirrors Rep Dwayne Bohac’s HB3571 in the house, a bill that will help stop the flood of Common Core/CSCOPE Textbooks now known as Instructional Materials (IMs) from coming into Texas Schools.ACTION STEP: Please join me in contacting Rep. Dwayne Bohac and thank him for filing HB 3571 on 3.12.15 — Dwayne.bohac@house.state.tx.us. Also, please contact Sen. Donna Campbell who filed SB 1711 (an identical bill to HB 3571) on 3.13.15. Her e-mail address is – donna.campbell@senate.state.tx.us. Then contact as many of the other Texas Legislators you possibly can and tell each one of them that HB 3571 and SB 1711 have long been needed and must be passed during this 84th Legislative Session. Rep. Bohac’s HB 3571 (and Sen. Donna Campbell’s SB 1711) is a piece of legislation that is a “patch” to fix SB 6 that was passed in 2011.
Previous to the passage of SB 6 in 2011, if ISD’s wished to purchase instructional materials (IM’s) with state funds, they had to select from a list of IM’s approved by the elected members of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) after public hearings in which those IM’s were put through a strenuous public state adoption process to make sure that they were aligned with the SBOE-approved curriculum standards (TEKS) and that factual errors had been corrected. Then a list was made of the IM’s that had met the requirements, and school administrators could use state funds to purchase IM’s from that approved list.
However, all of that changed once SB 6 was passed in 2011. SB 6 made it possible for school administrators to use state funds to purchase IM’s that had not been through the strenuous SBOE public adoption process. It is SB 6 that has allowed CSCOPE and Common Core IM’s to flood into Texas public schools using state funds to purchase them. The situation with CSCOPE grew so bad that Texas State Auditor John Keel was finally brought in to investigate the 20 Education Service Centers (ESC’s) that had been selling CSCOPE to more than 893 ISD’s, charters, and private schools in Texas.
On 6.16.14, the State Auditor released his report that proved the ESC’s violated eight sets of Texas state standards of financial management, had accounting errors on over 60% of their transactions, and could not account for over $6 Million of taxpayer funds. The State Auditor found that the financial processes were in such disarray that he felt compelled to recommend seven legislative “fixes” to rein them in.
Under Rep. Bohac’s HB 3571 (and Sen. Campbell’s identical bill – SB 1711), all IM’s to be purchased with state funds, whether or not those IM’s had been state-approved, would be placed under the same transparent public adoption scrutiny. The non-state adopted IM’s to be purchased by ISD’s with state funds would have to meet the same local-adoption requirements as the state-adopted IM’s.
Rep. Bohac’s HB 3571 (and Sen. Campbell’s SB 1711) is much needed to make sure that all IM’s purchased with state funds that are put in front of our Texas public school children are as free of errors as possible and are aligned with the TEKS that were adopted by the SBOE after years of public hearings.
Please go to this link to read the details of Rep. Bohac’s HB 3571: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=HB3571
Please go to this link to read the details of Sen. Donna Campbell’s SB 1711: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=SB1711
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