It’s over. The State Board of Education just approved new social studies textbooks and they’re headed to classrooms. So where do we stand? Perhaps the biggest headline of this whole saga: the important changes made to the books thanks to TFN’s work with scholars and activists like you: REMOVED: climate-change denial REMOVED: biased depiction of […]
9:13 - The State Board of Education (SBOE) is set today to vote on which proposed new social studies textbooks to adopt for Texas public schools. Publishers have been submitting changes to their textbooks since the public hearing on Tuesday. The last batch of changes — listed on more than 800 pages from publisher WorldView […]
The State Board of Education’s adoption of new social studies textbooks this week appears to be turning — all too predictably — into another political circus that shuts out the public as well as scholars and other experts. Board members, including Chairwoman Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, continue — in private — to pressure publishers into […]
1:15 - The State Board of Education (SBOE) has begun the second and final public hearing on social studies textbooks up for adoption for Texas public schools. MerryLynn Gerstenschlager from Texas Eagle Forum is up now. She just criticized textbooks for not making sure students learn about the “debate” over climate change. She argues that […]
Proposed social studies textbooks for Texas public schools will not include climate-change denial. In late reversals, two publishing heavyweights, Pearson Education and McGraw-Hill, have both confirmed that they will submit corrected textbooks this week at the SBOE. TFN distributed the following news release in response to the corrections. Publishers have agreed to correct or remove […]
We just sent out the following press release. Science and education advocates are calling on leading national publishers to revise proposed new social studies textbooks that include inaccurate and misleading information on climate science and promote climate change denialism. The Texas State Board of Education this month is considering the new textbooks, which could subsequently end up in […]
Of all the ways that the Texas State Board of Education twisted and distorted American history when adopting new social studies curriculum standards in 2010, one of the worst was — as the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute has pointed out — the way “biblical influences on America’s founding are exaggerated, if not invented.” The clear purpose […]
When Texas last adopted social studies textbooks in 2002, the new texts — particularly for the Grade 7 Texas History course — came under heavy fire from critics concerned over what they saw as poor coverage of the history and experiences of Mexican Americans. So when publishers submitted their proposed new textbooks this past spring, we wanted to […]
So what’s been happening in the controversial social studies textbook adoption in Texas? Since the State Board of Education’s first public hearing on the adoption in September and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund’s release of scholarly reviews of the proposed textbooks, publishers have been considering changes to their textbooks. Today the state board met to […]
When the State Board of Education held its first public hearing on proposed new social studies textbooks for Texas public schools, scholars from across the state (and from outside Texas) expressed their concerns about serious problems in those texts. Kathleen Wellman, Dedman Family Distinguished Professor of History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, was particularly […]
