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 of Education‘s faction of anti-science fanatics is clearly hoping to stack teams reviewing the science materials that publishers will submit at the end of February. A Texas Freedom Network review of current candidates for those review teams has identified more than a dozen who have been outspoken critics of evolutionary science, self-identified creationists or educators at evangelical Christian schools. Those candidates include nominees from state board members as well as individuals who have applied on their own to serve on the teams. Under a new schedule made available this week by the Texas Education Agency, those teams will meet in June to review the proposed science materials.
TEA released a list of more than 170 candidates for the science review teams at the January state board meeting. (The agency is still adding to the list.) At the same meeting, TEA staff said each review team — one for each of four high school courses, including biology — would likely have three to five members. Because most of the names on the long list of candidates are legitimate science educators and scholars, you might assume the odds are good that review teams will have very few (if any) anti-science activists. You shouldn’t.
The state board’s creationists have already indicated that they will insist that TEA put their nominees on the review teams. That demand would create a dilemma for TEA: focus on putting qualified people on the teams or submit to the political wishes of board members to stack the teams with anti-evolution activists promoting personal agendas. We won’t know until later in the spring who will actually serve on those teams.
A number of the creationism activists on the list of review team candidates have testified in the past before the State Board of Education in favor of teaching so-called “weaknesses” of evolution in science classrooms. Some are more prominent anti-evolution activists. Here is a sample of some of the anti-evolution candidates on the TEA list:
