WFISD and Wichita Falls Parents and Students

Each year, since Carnine's reign saw the bumper stickers about getting better each year, that's what parents have been told. Better and Improving each year!

The school system officials and elected representatives have for the most part said they cannot get good parent involvement in their children's learning.

I have told each superintendent and schoolboard for fourteen years that so long as you continue telling the parents everything is good and getting better each year those parents are inclined to devote their attention elsewhere.

However if you inform those same parents of major issues affecting the learning process of their children, then, for sure, those parents will not only get involved, but will take what action they can to help their children.

For 14 years my requests to have WFISD inform the parents through their own Education Reporter newspaper, have gone unheeded. Instead, Dr. Carnine, even published one paper putting down certain issues as being "manufactured crisis".

If I tried to tell a parent myself, a common response was "I trust the school system to tell me if there's something wrong or needing to be fixed." Translation, " I trust the school system. What they say, Goes. If there was something wrong they would tell me. The board are my elected representatives. "

So what's wrong? And can it be fixed?
Yes, things can be fixed, but apparently, only with strong parent input to the system, including voices and votes.

What's wrong with math? Math books need more complete presentations, documented by national math experts. Just call Plano ISD Parents organizations for details on this.

What's wrong with reading? Something's wrong when students hesitate to pick up a half inch thick book because they think it'll take them two weeks to read it. Somethings wrong when a typical good student reads only a little faster than they talk, about a hundred twenty five words per minute.

A typical school board report on reading will say how it's improved 5 or 10% over the previous year, and expected to get even better the following year. They will put up many poster boards of statistics and make various interpretations of how things are improving. Truth of the matter is, kids today read pitifully compared to what they could read. Vocabulary is weak. Reading skills are about half of what they should be. Details upon request.

What are some of the major issues that national key people know about and local parents don't?
1. Outcome Based Education was a phrase used during the Carnine reign. It was nationally known, and known also by a few hundred local parents, but not by most parents. I saw a large poster on O.B.E. at Fain Elementary, and asked Carnine about it. He continued to deny any trend towards OBE and immediately that poster was removed from the hallway at Fain. I still have a copy of a publication done by Carnine quoting Machiavelli to say "If you want to get something changed don't let the people know until you've done so much they can't stop you" in effect. He knew the teachers were being introduced to the new wave of O.B.E. teaching styles.

Details on O.B.E. were made available at the Arizona Parents website and in many books such as Brave New Schools. OBE is just one name for a process that has gone on for decades, eroding the quality of American high school diplomas. My teachers of A&M Consolidated H.S., told me of progressive education that was changing the way American children learned and what they learned. They did not like it. That was 1961 from some of the older teachers in the school. They said, it had been going on strongly since the 30's. That was John Dewey's era of transforming, for which he is called the Father of Modern Education. Notice the word modern, sure doesn't mean traditional or classical.

The list goes on, but space now is limited. So please ask if you want more information. Writing skills, math skills, foundational science concepts, history texts, and even social-engineering can be examined and repaired if enough parents will join together so they impact the school board and/or superintendent on these issues.

You must begin at this local level, and from here work your way up to the state level where at last count, the majority of our state school board members were against giving this kind of information to parents. At one time, three of them were in favor. Water doesn't flow upstream until it builds up a pressure, so you have to begin locally, right here in your town.

Once, I ran for school board, thinking I could bring some issues to light and get a class offered similar to Black History. I wanted an elective class called Christian History of Anything that had been touched by a Christian believer in Jesus Christ. After I campaigned, and had gained 2,000 verbal supporters, Superintendent the lady, said she had good news for me. They would offer the class and I wouldn't have to be on the school board to get it finished to be offered to the students. Well, being a poor working man who didn't have money to pay for time off being on the school board, I essentially resigned from the race, since the biggest thing I wanted had already been promised by the then Superintendent, Connie Welsch. 200 people voted for me anyway, but not the 2000, and someone else was elected in my place. Guess what, the class never got offered. None of my requests were implemented. Not even the simple thing of providing a two-sided scale balance for elementary schools, junior high and high school, from which to teach it's many lessons. Ask me about that for more details. Just one advantage of a child seeing a double-balance instead of just a single scale is how it makes so clear to algebra students about the equal sign in an algebraic equation. Yes, I've tutored high school students who needed this example to help them understand the process of solving an equation. That's sad. Electronic digitally precise scales do not teach the lesson. A double balance does. It's also a thing of art that lights up the child's mind, whereas a single pan scale just doesn't communicate the same things to a child. Many things like this can be done to enrich a student's understanding with foundational truths. Omitting such truth is to omit part of what the child should be given.

Parents should be informed of issues around how reading is taught. But for the most part, WFISD has chosen to say NO to all my repeated requests to just let the parents know of the controversy, even a battle surrounding this area of teaching. The battle is between a kind of phonics or a kind of "whole language" way of teaching.

I simply say parents should be informed and have a choice based on their information between different ways of teaching their child. This letter is written because up till now, the WFISD superintendents and school board have chosen not to publish these things for parents.

A principle taught by my older teachers in high school was taken from plane geometry. It said, if it's hard to see where the two lines of an angle are going, just extend the line so you can tell clearly where it's going and from whence it came. That's another way of saying you know a tree by it's fruit. People, have you examined the seeds of this new education style that has swept our schools since the early 90's. The name has changed many times, but the seed remains constant. The name changed as enough parents learned about each name to complain, then the name was dropped, denied, changed, and the process continued. It's been going on since John Dewey in the thirties. Now the current fruit is this: where American students used to score at the top of world wide science and math testing, now they test near the bottom. This is a fact. Why isn't the issue discussed among parents so they can fix it?

The Superintendent reign of Carnine ran a bond through based on improving our school buildings. What he did not tell people in several sections of the city was he was also going to build a new school. That new school took money many of us thought would be used for needed classrooms in other schools, and roofs and clean air conditioning. WFISD is still paying off debt from its 1993 bond election that helped finance West Foundation Elementary school and improvements throughout the district. Carnine not only did not disclose to parents of Fain and Barwise about building a totally new structure building; he also hid from us the truth of new teaching styles coming into use and being implemented without informing parents. And he must have done this with glee at his ability to hide things for on his special report, he quoted Machiavellie about how you don't tell people what you're doing until after its too late for them to do anything.

I find the system has repeated this attitude for over 40 years. I date my first experience when John C. Hooper was teaching math and found the new open class system with no discipline enough to nearly make him sick. He was a personal friend of mine and my grandmother Ferrell from Junior High days at Reagan Junior High. He was also the developer for much of the housing across from SAFB. He was a great man, a naval officer during WWII and a deacon in his church. When he developed those houses around Hooper street, the city of Wichita Falls agreed to pay him for putting in the sewer works after he completed the project. Well, the city reneged on their deal. It broke Capt. Hooper's heart. And that's what he died of prematurely. But folks I'm telling you sleigh of hand politics has been around this so called city that faith built for a long time. We have air-conditioning for horses at the new center but not enough of city swimming pools for the little people. Lot's of things like that all because parents say they're too busy.

Well do you want a $4/hr job for your child, then just do nothing. Last week I noticed where a payraise was being pushed through city managers for our DA, from 60 something thousand a year to 90 something thousand a year. And there was a quote from the DA to the effect , he was just asking for what was right. Oh well. Wichita Falls. If parents stay too busy to help run things even for their children then what can we expect.

Sign the petition and demand this New Elective Class for our schools. It will help teachers and students and families and our nation. Stand up.

Grandfather Education Report

Christian Parents Information Network