We told you last month how Randy Rives is playing fast and loose with the truth in his campaign to unseat Texas State Board of Education incumbent Bob Craig in tomorrow’s Republican Primary. Yesterday Rives’ campaign continued to distort the truth on a key issue from the candidate’s past — the decision by the Ector County […]
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)
Have Truer Words Been Spoken?
Perhaps Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy is finally getting close to the truth. “There is nothing conservative about what we did in English. Nothing conservative about what we did in science,” McLeroy said of the board’s record. […]
Standing Tall for Science in Texas
The National Center for Science Education has named three distinguished university scholars in Texas as the recipients of the organization’s 2010 Friend of Darwin award for their efforts last year to promote sound science education in public schools. Prof. Gerald Skoog of Texas Tech, Prof. David Hillis of the University of Texas at Austin and Prof. […]
Money Flows to Far-Right SBOE Candidates
FEB. 25 UPDATE: Campaign finance reports for Democrats seeking the District 5 seat on the Texas State Board of Education are now available. See below for the new numbers. Rebecca Bell-Metereau continues to build a large fundraising lead over her opponents for the Democratic nomination. We have also updated finance numbers from a corrected finance […]
Republican SBOE Candidates Duke It Out
Republican candidates for Cynthia Dunbar’s District 10 Texas State Board of Education seat met over the weekend at a public forum in Georgetown. It appears that evolution and sex education were among the hottest topics of discussion, according to the online Williamson County Conservative Examiner. (Hat tip to TFN Insider reader abb3w for calling this to our […]
