Members of the State Board of Education’s (SBOE) “ad hoc” committee appointed to oversee the review of CSCOPE — the curriculum management system used in hundreds of Texas public and private schools — say they want that review to be fair, open and based on facts. But the official form reviewers will use to evaluate the […]
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)
About Those Texas Science Reviewers, Ms. Cargill…
“The dietician actually has a degree in food science technology, and they have to take all kinds of science courses, I know, at colleges. And then the person you’re referring to is the retired businessman specializing in finance was the gentleman with the doctorate from Princeton in chemical engineering, so he’s certainly qualified. I’m looking […]
TFN Spokesman Talks about Texas Science Textbook Battle on MSNBC
Ryan Valentine, Texas Freedom Network’s deputy director, spoke on MSNBC today about our work defending science in this year’s textbook adoption at the State Board of Education. Check it out and see how Ryan puts to lie claims by anti-evolution activists that they just want students to be able to “ask questions”: Visit NBCNews.com for […]
Anti-Evolution Group Pitches a Hissy Fit When a Newspaper Reports the Truth
The Texas Freedom Network’s defense of sound science education was featured this weekend in a New York Times piece about the State Board of Education’s adoption of new biology textbooks — and, no surprise, anti-science pressure groups are hopping mad about it. Check out this rant from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based organization that promotes the […]
Anti-Evolution Fanatics Fail at the Ballot Box, Turn to the Courts
The evolution wars aren’t just a Texas phenomenon. On Thursday a group called Citizens for Objective Public Education filed a federal lawsuit to block Kansas from using multistate curriculum standards that treat evolution as established, mainstream science. From an Associated Press article: The lawsuit argues that the new standards will cause Kansas public schools to […]
