Have you been checking our #ThrowBackTexas page, where we look at what happened when right-wingers on the State Board of Education vandalized social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools four years ago? Even the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute has called the U.S. History standards adopted by the state board back in 2010 a “politicized distortion […]
social studies adoption (2014)
Ten Outrageous Changes Publishers Agreed to Make to Texas Social Studies Textbooks in 2002
The State Board of Education is set this year to adopt new social studies textbooks for Texas public schools. So we went back to our files to see what happened during the last social studies textbook adoption in the Lone Star State more than a decade ago. During public hearings and in written comments submitted in […]
#ThrowBackTexas: Jon Stewart Explains the Unexplainable at the State Board of Education
It’s #ThrowbackThursday, and rather than posting pictures of the horrible outfit you wore 20 years ago, why not drop a little knowledge on your friends? Right now the State Board of Education is trying to #ThrowbackTexas to a scarier time. In the alternate version of history promoted by some board members, slavery wasn’t that big of […]
SBOE Politics as Usual: Textbook Review Once Again Plagued by Lack of Expertise
The Texas State Board of Education will vote in November on new social studies textbooks that will be in Texas classrooms for the next decade. Earlier this month, official state review panels met in Austin to vet those books. As we did during the science textbook adoption process last year, the Texas Freedom Network researched who got appointed to the […]
Why Does the Right Have Such a Problem with History?
What is it with right-wingers who seem to have so much trouble with American history? See this tweet today from Peggy Venable, Texas policy director for the Koch-funded, anti-government Americans for Prosperity: “Peace is that brief glorious moment in history, when everybody stands around reloading” — Thomas Jefferson Except that there’s no evidence Jefferson ever said that. The Monticello […]