A new school year dawned in Cleburne ISD with the 2008-09 calendar. So did a new era.

Thanks to an innovative curriculum the district adopted known as CSCOPE, teachers are interacting more with students in the classrooms and introducing an assortment of innovative learning tools.

The days of memorizing written or spoken data and repeating it on a test are gone.

Some teachers have found the new curriculum challenging, said Dr. Lylia King, executive director of curriculum and instruction.

The response from students so far has been positive, she said.

Parents have their first opportunity this week to weigh in with the announcement that CSCOPE’s “Parent Portal” is now accessible to the public online at www.cscope.us/parentportal.

Through the Parent Portal, parents can catch a broad glimpse of what their students are studying and how, and the Web site offers short videos that explain the CSCOPE teaching and learning process.

“Last week, I and two of the curriculum coordinators attended the CSCOPE leadership conference in Houston,” King said. “While we were there, CSCOPE introduced the Parent Portal. The whole idea behind it is that the more parents are involved and the more they know what’s going on in the classroom, the more they can support their children in academic achievement.

“I’ve sent the Web site address to the principals and asked them to share it. The public can access it on Internet. We’re also sending it out to the parents through Skyward Family Access.”

Skyward already gives parents an opportunity to view students’ homework assignments and grades.

The CSCOPE Parent Portal offers more of an overview.

According to CSCOPE, “Key components of the CSCOPE curriculum are a K-12 systemic model in the four core content areas; common language, structure, and process for curriculum delivery; aligned written, taught, and tested curriculum; clarified and specified TEKS/TAKS expectations assembled in a vertical alignment format; customizable instructional plans that allow district resources to be integrated into the system; and lessons in both English and Spanish.”

The Parent Portal is a new wrinkle.

“CSCOPE just made it available,” King said. “There are good video resources. The first one is Kindergarten to Graduation. It shows that we plan our instruction through CSCOPE with the end in mind. It works its way down from 12th grade. That’s why CSCOPE seems rigorous right now. Before, we’d just work at what we felt was first grade or second grade level. With CSCOPE, we know we have to prepare students for the next level.

“The next video is instructional focus, how exactly the child will be taught. This is what the teachers see when they open CSCOPE.

“The third video is ‘The Power of Instruction with the Five E Model.’ Those are engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate. It’s very important that the teachers follow this model because it helps the students bring in their background knowledge. Students are no longer taking a multiple choice test to show what they know.”

CSCOPE is evidently popular with administrators and school boards. Almost 500 school districts have purchased the CSCOPE curriculum, King said.

It has required some teachers and students to adjust their learning process.

“CSCOPE requires the teachers to do more work up front so they can prepare the lessons,” King said. “During the actual instruction time, the students are doing more hands-on activities. The more hands on we are, the more we understood what we’re learning and the better we apply it to new activities.

“The biggest thing for teachers to realize is that CSCOPE is a process. It’s how we do things. It’s not a product. A lot of people think of it as a curriculum, and it’s really not. I can still teach the same material I was teaching before. It’s just a matter of how I teach it. I’m not going to be standing up there doing a lecture, and you’re not going to be sitting there taking notes. The student is involved in the learning — sharing it, talking about it, writing about it. It’s not just memorization. The classrooms are more interactive. There’s more group work.

“Some teachers adapt quicker than others. You can’t just come in at the last minute and say, ‘Open your book and read.’ That’s not the way CSCOPE works.”

CSCOPE curriculum is orderly. But order is not etched in stone, King said.

“The only time we change the order is when the entire district agrees to do so. We had that happen in secondary science. The teachers felt something needed to be shifted around.”

King is bullish on CISD teachers.

“We listen closely to the teachers,” she said. “They’re the professionals in their subject areas. We have awesome teachers.”