Texas has 20 Regional Educational Service Centers (ESCs). Each ESC is to provide service to public school districts in their region. The Texas legislature has over time increased the ESCs until they have become the “Kingpin” that links all the different parts of Texas education together.
The staff at the different Texas ESCs train teachers, principals, counselors, school board members, and superintendents. In fact, a person can receive training at the ESCs, take the state test and receive a certificate to be a Texas teacher, principal or superintendent.
Certification/Qualification of the ESCs Staff
Question
Are all ESC directors, consultants, and trainers certified for their position? Are they all qualified for their jobs?
Answer
NO. Checking the Texas certifications of the thousands of ESC staff is a big job.
If you would like to help, use the following TEA link and check the staff for your Regional Education Service Center. State Education Certificates
Prepare a list a list of the names you cannot find an education certificate for as well as names that do not have proper training. For example, ESC directors of science who have physical education certificates as well as principal certificates are not certified to be science directors, consultants, and/or trainers.
Send to me the names of the ESC staff that you have concerns about. Send to: CscopeReview@gmail.com
The Texas Educational Service Centers have become the Texas Administrators Retirement Center for many Texas superintendents and principals. Notice the certifications for the ESC executive directors. Most of the ESC executive directors are retired school superintendents. Many Texas superintendents have a physical education teaching certificate plus a biology or history certification. The job requirements of school superintendents has changed to include selecting core curriculum. Thus, school superintendents decide what instructional materials are used by every teacher.
Over 80% of Texas school superintendents purchased the CSCOPE lessons created and sold by the Texas Education Service Centers. CSCOPE was determined by the Texas State Senate not to be a quality instructional material and banned the ESCs from selling CSCOPE lessons.
BANNED–Yes, the 20 ESCs had to cleanse their files of all CSCOPE lessons and are not allowed to write any more. That was the punishment for creating CSCOPE lessons that had plagarized content, incorrect content, and anti-American lesson content.
The bottom line is that the ESCs are a weak link in Texas Education. This is because each ESC has become a vendor that sells products and services to Texas schools. Without any overseeing of the agencies, they have become overstaffed with people not qualified to train educators or administrators. There is no one who governs the ESCs, thus they govern themselves. Obviously the so called governing boards for each ESC is just another front to fool the public. The most decisive action of this board is to have hearings for ESC “Whistle Blowers.”
One way to deal with an ESC “Whistle Blower” is to change his/her job title. Their pay is not changed but more menial tasks (lowly and sometime degrading) become part of their job description. “Whistle Blowers” are watched closely and written up for trivial things, such as voice tone.
There are few ESC “Whistle Blowers.” The highly qualified ESC staff has the largest workload, but they just keep their mouths shut, for fear of retaliation. The are the people who want the legislature, the Sunset Committee, TEA or someone to stop this farce. There has not been a Commissioner of Education in years who actually cared what the ESCs do. In fact, the ESCs were involved in helping Commissioner Williams create the governing rules for the ESCs.
The focus on education ended when the Texas Legislature allowed the ESCs to sell products.
To be continued—
