5:29 – That’s a wrap. We’re calling this hearing a lopsided victory for science. Thanks, everyone. Watch the blog tomorrow for video of former SBOE chair Don McLeroy’s strange and confusing return to the board as a member of the public, and other fall-out from today’s hearing. For pictures from today’s science rally (and virtual […]
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)
TFN Scores Partial Win for Transparency in Texas Textbook Adoption
For weeks we have been pushing the Texas Education Agency to release changes publishers are proposing in their responses to objections official reviewers have raised regarding their new science textbooks. It is simply unacceptable for the State Board of Education to adopt those new textbooks until Texans have a chance to see whether their children’s […]
TFN Will Be Live-Blogging, Tweeting the Texas SBOE's Science Textbook Hearing Today
“Any statements made were my own personal beliefs.” That’s how Karen Beathard, an official state textbook reviewer, defends telling publishers that the biology textbooks they submitted for adoption in Texas this year should include “creation science based on biblical principles.” Her statement encapsulates precisely the problem with the science textbook adoption process in Texas. Some […]
Cargill: 'I'm one of you'
Another first-hand report from the science review panel meeting last month in Austin has emerged, and it seems to corroborate some of the concerns about the flawed process expressed last week by biology panel participant Jimmy Gollihar. Specifically, it raises more questions about what State Board of Education Chairwoman Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, was doing […]
Stand Up for Science on Tuesday
Here’s how, no matter where you are. […]
