Politics and personal agendas dominated the Texas State Board of Education’s process for adopting new science curriculum standards for public schools two years ago. Now our first look at the developing process for approving science instructional materials based on those standards has increased our concerns that politics will continue to trump education. The State Board […]
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)
Creationists Build a Legislative Strategy
The National Center for Science Education reports that lawmakers in New Mexico will consider what is currently the fifth anti-evolution bill filed in state legislatures across the country. The bill in New Mexico is similar to legislation filed in that state two years ago. It would encourage instruction about “strengths and weaknesses” of “controversial” scientific […]
Creationist Group Backs Out in Texas
The Foundation for Thought and Ethics, a prominent creationist group, has reversed a stated intention to submit instructional materials this year for use in Texas science classrooms. That decision, publicized on FTE’s website, is very good news for supporters of sound science education and students in Texas public schools. On the other hand, it almost […]
Anti-Science: Georgia Edition
Here’s U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Georgia, repeatedly rejecting evolutionary science on Friday. Think maybe creationists on the Texas State Board of Education will try appointing Kingston to a panel that reviews science instructional materials for public schools this spring? […]
Texas SBOE E-mails: Politicizing Science
Texas State Board of Education members are already moving to politicize the adoption of new instructional materials for public school science classes in Texas this spring. E-mails obtained by the Texas Freedom Network on Wednesday through a request under the state’s open records law make that pretty clear. In an e-mail exchange last November, for […]
