Check out this alarming interview with Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy on the ABC News program Nightline last night. It’s hard to overstate the disaster that is unfolding for the education of Texas schoolchildren — really for schoolchildren across the country, considering the huge influence of Texas in the national textbook market. Fortunately, voters […]
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)
Religious Freedom Fails in Texas
The Texas Freedom Network just sent out the following press release: The Texas State Board of Education’s vote today against requiring that students learn what the nation’s Founders did to protect religious freedom represents an irresponsible rewriting of American history and a stunning triumph of politics over education, the president of the Texas Freedom Network […]
SBOE Rejects Religious Freedom in Standards
Today the Texas State Board of Education voted to reject an amendment to social studies curriculum standards that would require students to learn that the nation’s Founders “protected religious freedom by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” The party-line vote — 10 Republicans against and 5 Democrats in favor […]
FOX Coverage of Texas Debate: FAIL
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 […]
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 […]
