Gov. Perry Puts Politics Ahead of Education by Appointing Cargill As SBOE Chair
Governor’s Third Appointment of Board ‘Culture Warrior’ Ensures Continuing Political Battles
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 1, 2011
The Texas Freedom Network is releasing the following statement from TFN Communications Director Dan Quinn regarding Gov. Rick Perry’s appointment of Barbara Cargill as chair of the State Board of Education. Cargill is the third member of the state board’s faction of social conservatives who Gov. Perry has chosen to chair the board. The governor’s two previous appointees, Don McLeroy and Gail Lowe, failed to gain Senate confirmation because of their repeated efforts to drag Texas public schools into the nation’s divisive culture wars.
Quinn said:
“Strike three for Gov. Perry. Once again, he is putting politics ahead of the education of Texas students by installing an ideologue in the chairman’s seat. Just like the governor’s two previous appointees as chair, Ms. Cargill has worked since her election to the board to promote her own personal beliefs rather than facts and sound scholarship in our kids’ classrooms. In fact, she even succeeded in censoring the scientific consensus on the age of the universe from the state’s science standards. And she helped politicize new social studies standards by appointing an unqualified conservative evangelical minister as a so-called ‘expert’ adviser simply because his personal ideology matched her own. Because the Senate can’t act on this nomination until 2013, the governor has single-handedly ensured that the state board will continue to be a divisive and embarrassing battleground in the nation’s culture wars for the next two years.”
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The Texas Freedom Network is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of religious and community leaders who support public education, religious freedom and individual liberties.
