Religious-right candidates in two key Republican runoff elections on April 13 are badly trailing their opponents in the campaign funding race. But will that mean much on election day? […]
Textbook Censorship
The Texas State Board of Education decides what every student in Texas public schools will learn from kindergarten through high school. The board does so by adopting curriculum standards and textbooks for public schools in the state.
For decades, far-right politicians on the State Board of Education and their extremist allies have taken advantage of this flawed system to dismiss the advice of experts and scholars. They have instead worked to inject their personal views into textbooks on everything from evolution and climate change to the history of slavery, civil rights, and separation of church and state.
Resources
- Report Reveals Serious Flaws in Social Studies Textbooks
- The State Board of Education: Dragging Texas Schools into the Culture Wars (2008 report)
- Evolution, Creationism & Public Schools: Surveying Texas Scientists (2008 report)
- Culture Wars and the Classroom (2010 report)
- Senate Bill 6: Changes in the Textbook Adoption Process (2011 report)
- Texas Science Curriculum Standards: Challenges (2012 report)
- Science Textbook Review (2013 report)
- Social Studies Textbook Review (2014 report)
UT Faculty Focus on Social Studies Standards
Faculty members at the state’s largest public university clearly are growing increasingly wary as they watch the State Board of Education vandalize and politicize social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. Two upcoming events will highlight their concerns. The Texas IP Fellows will host a debate over the proposed social studies standards at 3 p.m. […]
Lawmakers to Texas Ed Board: It’s Time to Talk
Today Texas lawmakers picked up a bigger megaphone to get the attention of a bitterly divided, out-of-control State Board of Education. At a Capitol press conference, members of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC) announced that they are scheduling a public hearing for April 28 to examine how and why the state board has run off the […]
The Federal Reserve and the Bible
Perhaps others were just as puzzled as we were when the religious-right bloc on the Texas State Board of Education went after the Federal Reserve System earlier this month. At the board’s March 11 meeting, Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, proposed the following standard for revised curriculum standards for high school economics: “(A)nalyze the decline in value […]
Pointing Fingers and Shading the Truth
Texas State Board of Education members are pointing fingers at everyone but themselves for the debacle over revising social studies curriculum standards. In new interviews with the Southern Baptist TEXAN, board Chair Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, and fellow member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, are complaining that reporting about the board’s actions have been inaccurate. And they point […]
