Category Archives for State Board of Education

Texas Science Education Battle in 2013

After several years of especially divisive “culture war” battles over what Texas public school students should learn about evolution, history and other subjects, the State Board of Education last week decided that it will adopt new science textbooks for all schools in 2013. The new adoption schedule also has the board approving textbooks for history [...]

Also posted in 2012 Texas SBOE elections, creationism, evolution, sex education, social studies, textbooks, TFN
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Taking Lessons from Texas?

Seems that it’s not just the Texas State Board of Education that wants to revise American history to fit a particular ideological agenda. Now Tennessee Tea Party activists are trying to do the same thing in their state. From the Wall Street Journal: The late comedian George Carlin used to say America was built on [...]

Also posted in social studies, tea party, TFNEF
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Down the Memory Hole?

Nov. 14 UPDATE: Prof. Erekson’s report has been reposted on the Social Studies Collaborative website. The copyright has been changed to Prof. Erekson, dropping the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board copyright. The THECB’s logo has also been dropped from the report. —– Is the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board trying to “disappear” last week’s report [...]

Also posted in social studies, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
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TX SBOE Chair Is Trying to Hide the Truth

The news media is picking up on the story we broke Monday about a report for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that sharply criticizes new history curriculum standards adopted by the State Board of Education (SBOE) last year. And as the controversy grows, SBOE Chairwoman Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, is trying desperately to hide [...]

Also posted in Barbara Cargill, social studies
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Low-lights in Social Studies

As we reported Monday, a new report prepared for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board slams the State Board of Education (SBOE) for their politicized, factually challenged re-write of social studies curriculum standards last year. The report is worth a read to see just how extensive the damage was to those standards — and to [...]

Also posted in curriculum standards, social studies
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New Report Slams TX School History Standards

Yet another report confirms just how badly the Texas State Board of Education botched the revision of social studies curriculum standards last year. Short version: the new standards will fail to prepare students for college-level work. It should be obvious even to impartial observers that the heavily politicized state board is wrecking public education in [...]

Also posted in social studies
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Don ‘Incendiary’ McLeroy

The picture above of current Texas State Board of Education member Thomas Ratliff, R-Mt. Pleasant, pointing (sort of) at former board chair Don McCleroy, R-Bryan, is not directly related to what you’re about to read, but it will be what springs to mind when you’re done with this blog post. A few weeks ago TFN [...]

Also posted in Don McLeroy
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Public Schools a ‘Criminal Enterprise’!

Remember when Cynthia Dunbar, then a member of the Texas State Board of Education, wrote that public schools are unconstitutional, “tyrannical” and “a subtly deceptive tool of perversion”? In the three years since then, the religious right’s campaign to undermine public education in America has become only louder. The newest tool in the right’s war [...]

Also posted in education
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Contempt for Voters

So what’s with the dishonest campaign to remove from office a State Board of Education member who had the gall to challenge — successfully — the re-election of a prominent member of the state board’s far-right faction in 2010? Just another example of the far right’s contempt for Texas voters. We’re talking about Thomas Ratliff, [...]

Also posted in David Bradley, Donna Garner, Thomas Ratliff
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Cargill Sort of Explains Herself

Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, is having a tough go of it to begin her tenure as the Texas State Board of Education gavel-master. But lame “blame the media” and “you were never meant to hear that” excuses from her and her supporters (including former board chairman Don McLeroy) will do little to fix the damage [...]

Also posted in Barbara Cargill
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