A new report from the Guttmacher Institute shows that the nation’s teen pregnancy rate has increased for the first time in more than a decade. During that decade federal, state and local governments have spent billions of dollars on abstinence-0nly programs that deliberately exclude medically accurate information about contraception and other methods of responsible disease prevention. From […]
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)
What a Paine That Might Have Been…
This month’s Texas State Board of Education meeting featured many examples of how poorly informed some board members really are. Over a two-day period, the board picked apart a proposed draft of new social studies curriculum standards that teachers, scholars and other community members had spent a year researching, discussing and debating. Often the amendments […]
David Barton Gets Defensive — and Vicious
David Barton, the self-styled historian appointed by the Texas State Board of Education to a panel of curriculum “experts,” is angry with the Texas Freedom Network. In an e-mail to far-right activists last week, the founder of WallBuilders (a Christian-right organization that opposes separation of church and state) brands TFN as a member of the […]
SBOE Elections: Far Right Targets Bob Craig
With the filing period now closed, it’s clear that the religious right is targeting another traditional Republican for defeat on the Texas State Board of Education. District 15 board incumbent Bob Craig, R-Lubbock, will be challenged in a March GOP primary that could further strengthen the far right’s control of the board. Craig’s primary opponent […]
The Year in Quotes: Potluck Nuttiness
We heard nuttiness in many forms throughout 2009, including the Texas governor flirting with secessionists and the lieutenant governor criticizing the president of the United States for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. And there was plenty of downright hatefulness. More quotes from 2009: “There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to […]
