UPDATE: The Texas Education Agency has now posted the press release on its Web site. In a highly unusual move, the Texas Education Agency has just distributed a press release sharply criticizing the grossly inaccurate coverage of the debate over social studies curriculum standards in Texas. Three cheers to TEA’s press office for calling out […]
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)
SBOE Takes Up Social Studies Again
On Wednesday (March 10) the Texas State Board of Education will resume its debate — begun in January — on proposed new social studies curriculum standards for public schools. TFN Insider will blog from the meeting at the Texas Education Agency building in Austin. The meeting begins at 11 a.m., and we anticipate that two […]
American-Statesman Talks with SBOE Winner
UPDATE: Nathan Bernier at Austin’s public radio station, KUT, also talked to Clayton. One thing is becoming clear: he’s not an ideologue. He calls arguments about teaching “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution just “code words for creationism.” Check out the interview here. George Clayton‘s Republican primary victory over longtime Texas State Board of Education incumbent Geraldine “Tincy” Miller […]
Voters Spank Far Right in SBOE Elections
First, the good news: At least two members of the Texas State Board of Education’s far-right faction won’t be there in 2011. Cynthia “Public Education Is a Tool of Perversion” Dunbar, R-Richmond, got so much heat for her extremism — including outrageous attacks on public schools — that she decided not to run for re-election. […]
McLeroy, Mercer Get Late Money
Houston homebuilder Bob Perry put $5,000 into College Station incumbent Don McLeroy‘s shaky State Board of Education campaign on Friday, according to a “telegram” report published on the Texas Ethics Commission Web site late today. San Antonio incumbent Ken Mercer also reported $1,200 in late contributions from two donors (but not Perry) over the weekend. […]