You already know it’s a presidential election year. It’s also an election year for the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), with eight of the board’s 15 seats on ballots all across the state this November. SBOE races don’t always get much attention, which is unfortunate because if you’ve followed us here you probably know […]
Education
Texas has an increasingly diverse public education system with a public school enrollment of more than 5 million. Unfortunately, that public education system is also the target of right-wing extremists seeking to privatize our neighborhood public schools and push a culture-war agenda in the classroom.
To that end, Texas Freedom Network tirelessly fights for Texas public school students at the Capitol — opposing private school voucher legislation, sticking up for students’ freedoms, advocating for truthful, censorship-free lessons and textbooks, and more. We’ve also conducted groundbreaking research into what is taught in classrooms on subjects like sex education and religion.
Resources
- Teach the Truth: Texans United Against Censorship in Education
- Can This Class Be Saved? The ‘Hobby Lobby’ Public School Bible Curriculum (2014 report)
- Reading, Writing & Religion II (2013 report)
- Sex Education in Public Schools: Progress in the Lone Star State (2011 report)
- Just Say Don’t Know: Sex Education in Texas Public Schools (2009 report)
- The State Board of Education: Dragging Texas Schools into the Culture Wars (2008 report)
- Reading Writing & Religion: Teaching the Bible in Texas Public Schools (2006 report)
- Broken Promises II (2001 report)
- Broken Promises: Charter Schools in Texas (2000 report)
2015 in Quotes: The War on Science
The right’s contempt for facts is especially evident when it comes to issues like climate change and evolution. Here’s some of the science denialism we heard from the right on in 2015. (Click here for previous posts on what we heard from the right in 2015.) “I’m going to punt on that one as well. That’s a question […]
2015 in Quotes: Education
Education continues to be a major battleground in the religious right’s culture wars. If they’re not trying to destroy public education, religious righters are trying to use it instead to indoctrinate students in right-wing ideology. Here’s some of what we heard from the right on this issue in 2015. (Click here for previous posts on what we heard […]
Texas AG Nixes Power Grab by State Board of Education
Last June, just before Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Donna Bahorich, R-Houston, as the new chair of the State Board of Education, outgoing chairwoman Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, tried to get the SBOE more authority. Today the Texas Attorney General’s Office slapped down that power grab. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office released a formal opinion saying […]
TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL SLAPS DOWN SBOE POWER GRAB
Formal AG’S Opinion Rejects Effort to Give the State Board of Education Authority to Set Rules for Local Textbook Adoptions FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 4, 2015 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office today released a formal opinion saying that the State Board of Education does not have authority under Texas law to set rules for […]
