top of page
Writer's pictureTexansWakeUp Admin

Education Spotlight: Amplify

Updated: Mar 23, 2023



🚨WARNING - NOT APPROPRIATE FOR MINORS 🚨




  • Larry Berger, CEO/Co-Founder

Board Members:

  • Russlyn Ali

  • Michael Carmunez

  • Rob Hutter

  • Brad Powell

  • Margaret Spellings



“For more than 150 years, the Southern Education Foundation has been bending the arc of American education toward equity and justice. It's mission remains urgent. I am honored to join the Board to help the organization continue to make an impact on K-12 education for students of color and low-income students in the American South.” -Larry Berger, CEO Amplify



Amplify & DEI





Amplify Products:

  • Caminos

  • CKLA

  • ELA

  • Math

  • Science

  • CKLA Skills

  • Reading

  • Close Reading

  • mClass

  • mClass Espanol

  • mClass with Amplify Reading

  • mClass Intervention

  • mClass Math


  • It's important to point out that the version of Amplify that Texas is using, courtesy of the Commissioner of Education Mike Morath, has NOT been approved by the Texas SBOE.

  • But Amplify products are somehow on the TEA TCLAS (Texas COVID Learning Acceleration Supports) approved vendor list:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------






Amplify Texas Review

03/2023

by Texans Wake Up

Note: In November 2022, several teachers invited a select group of education advocates to a private meeting. The subject was Amplify Texas. Texans Wake Up was one of the leaders in organizing volunteers from all over the state of Texas to create this review of Texas Amplify K-5. Although incomplete due to lack of volunteers and time, the content is quite telling as is.





Lauren Hickmontt Speaks on Amplify TX at Texas Ed 911 Legislative Day at the Capital

03/07/2023

by Texas Ed 911





Melanie Johnson Speaks on Amplify TX at Texas Ed 911 Legislative Day at the Capital

03/07/2023

by Texas Ed 911





Jamie Haynes Speaks on Amplify TX at Texas Ed 911 Legislative Day at the Capital

03/07/2023

by Texas Ed 911





02/2023

by Amplify Texas Reading Team

Please note: We are unsure which exact product is now named Boost. Our TEA contact is communicating that this is a supplementary tutoring product. We are honestly unsure. We have not reached out to Amplify corporate.




01/23/2023

by Amarillo ISD





Amplify vs Amplify TEXAS Unit Comparison

(Grade 5 | Unit 1 )

01/08/2023

by Amarillo Parent






12/15/2023

by Texans Wake Up





11/29/2022

by Nancy Bailey






Texas Leader Sends Warning About Amplify Curriculum

11/10/2022

by Candy Gibbs Facebook





11/02/2022

by Nancy Bailey





Concerned Parents Alert Amarillo ISD of Passage & District Leaves Available for 4th Grade

10/2022

Amarillo, TX Parent

The below is in Amplify 4th Grade, Unit 1.


At first glance the above passage may seem harmless. Upon a re-read and further investigation, parents tracked it back to a book entitled 'When I Was Puerto Rican' by Esmeralda Santiago. The excerpt from this book was the prologue entitled “How to eat a Guava”.

"Though the language used seemed overtly sexual in nature it was probably the only passage that could have been pulled from this book that would have been suitable for young children. When I wanted to see if I was just being a jaded adult in thinking the description of how to eat a guava seemed very sexual I went to find an overview of the book the passage was from, “When I Was Puerto Rican” (by Esmeralda Santiago). When I was done reading the overview I was appalled." - Amarillo Parent

"In one chapter of the book a young girl witnesses a man pleasuring himself as he looks at her through his window. The next chapter has her mother’s new boyfriend move in and he offers her a quarter to unbutton her blouse, then precedes to pinch a part of her breast. The book paints Christianity in a poor light, it has anti-American sentiment, anti-parent sentiment in addition to all of the inappropriate sexual interaction between a child and various adults. I will state again these 4th graders were not given the full book, but only a passage from the book. My concern is what happens when a child is at the book store with Mom or Dad and they see this book they tell their parents, hey we read part of this at school can I get it so I can read the whole book. Mom and Dad think this book is okay if they were allowed to read some of it at school and then the child is exposed to inappropriate content." - Amarillo Elementary Parent

Passages from the book overview below. A link to the book overview.

"There are thousands of passages that could have achieved the same goal as this one. Why would the publisher choose this passage knowing the source content? Why would a district not remove when notified? Did the Texas SBOE approve this curriculum?" - Texas Parents

One might then wonder if Amplify knew? Was this an honest mistake? After visiting the homepage of Amplify.com, we can see the company is very familiar with her work. See "Cuando era puertooriquena" by Esmeralda Santiago below (yellow covered title below).


Amarillo ISD is in Region 16 of Texas and Doug Loomis is the superintendent.





10/16/2022

by Nancy Bailey




10/2/2022

by Midland ISD Parent FB Group, Parent Research Posted







Amplify Analysis (8th Grade Focus)

08/23/2022

by Lubbock ISD Parent







Analysis of Amplify Curriculum

by Donna Garner

11/21/2021

Please read.




Business Wire

10/26/2021


Board Members per article:

  • Emerson Collective Managing Director and XQ Institute CEO, Russlynn Ali

  • Amplify CEO, Larry Berger

  • Monarch Global Strategies President and CEO, Michael Camunez

  • Emerson Collective Managing Director, Brad Powell

  • Former Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings

  • Learn Capital, Rob Hunter

  • A-Street Ventures, Marc Sternberg



April 28, 2021

See "Ed Spotlight: Russlyn Ali" (CEO of XQ).




www.amplify.com/news

10/05/2020


Please note TEA partner list:





by Thomas Ultican

2/19/2020







01/24/2020

by Nancy Bailey





10/23/2019 by Betty Casey









By Dave Stevenson (former Amplify executive) 

04/03/2019




by EdSurge

Nov 21, 2015




Starting at 2015





Reuters

November 20, 2015




2014





Marketplace K-12: Tracking business trends and emerging models in education

2013

by S. Cavanagh in Education Week, Spotlight


"One of the two consortia developing tests for the Common Core State Standards has awarded a $12.5 million contract to Amplify Insight to develop a digital library of formative assessment professional learning tools for educators (2013, para 1)"

"Amplify Insight is a division of Amplify, an ed-tech company whose chief officer is Joel Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor. Amplify is the education arm of the media conglomerate, News Corp., led by Rupert Murdoch. Last week, Amplify received a blast of media attention when it unveiled a new tablet device, loaded with classroom management tools and interactive lessons, at the South by Southwest education gathering (2013, para 4)."




The Agenda to Control Information and Knowledge Through the Accountability System

by A. Patrick Huff, PhD

2/17/2015

Pg 46-47


When it was revealed that Mr. Murdoch purchased Wireless Generation in 2010 (Phillips, 2010), which was the first company to be awarded a contract for the development of Common core assessments (2010), and that Wireless Generation is now called Amplify, one begins to wonder what inside information may have been available for this acquisition. Of course, this is only a suspicion. Phillips goes on to reveal, "The company is likely to make a bid to build the technological pieces of the national tests that will be tied to the 'common core' standards (2010, para 9)."

Mr. Murdoch reflected in this quote from his company's press release on the vast amount of money that it is possible to make in the education market. He also echoed the sentiment held by all of the entrepreneurs feeding at the trough of education with the children of America as guinea pigs set up for experimentation.


"When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching. Wireless Generation is at the forefront of individualized technology-based learning that is poised to revolutionize public education for a new generation of students." - News Corporation Chairman & CEO, Rupert. Murdoch




2013







* All information in the article is for parents to understand practices, philosophies, resources (and their effects), curriculum, and testing for their children and falls under Fair Use laws.


3,456 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


Commenting has been turned off.