Perhaps Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy is finally getting close to the truth.
“There is nothing conservative about what we did in English. Nothing conservative about what we did in science,” McLeroy said of the board’s record.
On this, the Texas Freedom Network and McLeroy can agree. Much of the damage done to public education by the state board over the past four years hasn’t been caused by conservatives on the board.
No, the relentless assault on the education of Texas schoolchildren, on the integrity and professionalism of classroom teachers, and on respect for true expertise has come from a faction of extremists who control the board. Those extremists have turned issue after issue into divisive and completely unnecessary “culture war” battles in which they politicize classrooms and portray their opponents — including other Republican board members — as “radical leftists” who hate Christians. They have even attacked the faith of their opponents, suggesting that they are not really Christians at all. In short, the faction’s record has been intolerant and extreme, certainly not conservative.
And McLeroy, as ringleader of that faction, has celebrated the triumph of politics over the education of Texas schoolchildren, insisting that education “is too important not to be politicized.”
We’ll find out on Tuesday whether Republican primary voters in Texas agree with him.
