TFN just sent the following alert to our members regarding SBOE Chair Barbara Cargill’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Nominations. To sign up to get these alerts, click here. Senator Watson’s tough questions produce promises from Cargill. Will she keep them? Barbara Cargill got tough questions and made some new commitments when the Senate […]
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)
Stealth Creationist Meets Open Creationist: Texas SBOE Chair Barbara Cargill and State Sen. Donna Campbell
At today’s Senate confirmation hearing on Barbara Cargill’s reappointment as State Board of Education chair, Texans got a chance to see two of their elected leaders vandalizing the concept of science education in public schools. Speaking at a meeting of Senate Education Committee just two weeks ago, Cargill said she wants publishers to “soften” their […]
Cargill Science Comments at Hearing Highlight Concerns over Reappointment as Texas Ed Board Chair
We just got back from the Texas Senate Nominations Committee hearing on Barbara Cargill’s reappointment to another term as chair of the State Board of Education. We’ll have much more soon — including some alarming comments about science from both Cargill and at least one member of the Senate committee. Meanwhile, here’s the press release […]
Texans Deserve Answers: Senate Committee to Consider Cargill Nomination for SBOE Chair
The Texas Senate Nominations Committee will consider the reappointment of Barbara Cargill to another term as State Board of Education chair on Monday. Cargill is the third evolution-denier in a row appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to chair the board. The tenure of her two most recent predecessors — culture warriors Don McLeroy and Gail […]
Told You So: Texas Ed Board Chair Wants Science Textbooks to Teach 'Another Side' on Evolution
We told you this would happen. In 2009, when the Texas State Board of Education adopted new science curriculum standards, we warned that creationists had inserted language they would later try to exploit to pressure publishers into including junk-science arguments against evolution in new textbooks. Barbara Cargill, the Republican state board chair from The Woodlands […]
