Teams made up of educators, parents and other community members from around Texas are meeting in Austin to complete their reviews of textbooks and other instructional materials in science that publishers have submitted for the state’s public schools. The teams are meeting to determine whether the proposed materials conform to the state’s Texas Essential Knowledge […]
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)
#FAIL: Dan Patrick Petition Brags About Passing Anti-CSCOPE Bill He Hasn't Passed Yet
UPDATE: Sen. Patrick’s website petition about CSCOPE was updated early Friday evening with a partial correction regarding the status of SB 41. By around midnight, however, the petition had disappeared completely from the website. *** We have some unsolicited advice for Texas state Sen. Dan Patrick: If you’re going to brag about passing a bill […]
CSCOPE Witch Hunt: Patrick, Dewhurst Compete for the Loony Vote While Throwing Local Control Out the Window
Now Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has joined state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, in throwing local control out the window and pandering to fanatics attacking the CSCOPE curriculum program used in hundreds of Texas school districts. In a letter to the State Board of Education on Wednesday, Dewhurst said that he is “deeply troubled” that teachers in […]
Creationist Tries to Set Us Straight on Evolution (and Communism)
The reaction to the relaunch of our Stand Up for Science campaign has been fantastic. It’s clear that thousands of Texans see the State Board of Education’s adoption of new science textbooks later this year as critically important to ensuring that Texas kids get an education based on sound, peer-reviewed scholarship, not creationist junk science. […]
CSCOPE Witch Hunt Flares Up Again: Sen. Patrick and AG Abbott Target Educators
Just two months after gutting a curriculum tool that nearly 900 Texas school districts were using, state Sen. Dan Patrick and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott have decided they’re not done harassing educators and wasting taxpayer dollars. Last week Patrick called on the Texas State Auditor’s Office to review the operations of the Texas Education […]
