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. […]
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)
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 […]
C'mon, Texas. Evolve Already.
Earlier today, the Texas Freedom Network relaunched its Stand Up for Science campaign, the latest installment in our ongoing efforts to ensure Texas schoolchildren receive only mainstream science, and not creationist arguments, in their public school science classes and textbooks. So why now? Because there are some big decisions coming over the next four months […]
Creationist Tells Parents: Science Textbooks Must Acknowledge God's Word
The Texas Home School Coalition (THSC), run by religious-right activist Tim Lambert, is promoting arch-creationist Ken Ham‘s speech at the group’s convention in The Woodlands near Houston next month. An email to the group’s supporters today includes a link to a revealing essay on Ham’s Answers in Genesis website: “Should Homeschoolers Let Children Decide on […]
'The Revisionaries' Documentary about the Texas State Board of Education, TFN Wins Audience Award for PBS Program
We asked you last week to help The Revisionaries documentary win the Audience Award from the PBS series Independent Lens — and you came through! On Monday the folks at PBS announced that The Revisionaries, which had been trailing by hundreds of votes early last Friday, captured the award at the end of the day. […]