State education board keeps itself in the news

[white cloud]

Unless you have been out of the country since late last year, you know that Texas schools have again made the national news. The last time we basked in 15 minutes of fame was when our State Board of Education agreed to remove references to creationism in the science curriculum. We are enjoying our current bout of celebrity over the board's effort to revise the guidelines for teaching high school history. Though we have moved from fossils embedded in rocks to Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the stakes remain the same: How do we make sense of the past?

At a public forum recently at the Honors College at the University of Houston, teachers, administrators and public advocates described efforts by the board's conservative bloc to revise the guidelines. Pitched battles had been fought at hearings over the individuals and groups that high school students should be able to identify. The bloc, for example, tried to remove from the list pivotal figures in our civil rights movement like César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall and replace them with heretofore anonymous and anodyne minority figures. They also succeeded in adding conservative figures like Phyllis Schlafly to the list. According to one panelist, Lester Maddox and the John Birch Society were also considered as candidates.



http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6912042.html

[sonias]

1. Texas Textbook MASSACRE

Yes it is so embarrassing to have these clowns serving on any elected board.

Huffington Post 3/13/10
Texas Textbook MASSACRE: 'Ultraconservatives' Approve Radical Changes To State Education Curriculum
AUSTIN, Texas - A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.

(snip)
The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum's world history standards on Enlightenment thinking, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

From the Texas Freedom Network's live-blog of the board hearing:

Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with "the writings of") and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson's ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

[Lithos]

2. Such an obvious push seems like a lawsuit in the making

Does anyone know the history of judicial moderation of such obviously agenda-driven (and bigoted) panderings?

Also, what are the real options that a school or a teacher has? Can they counterbalance this by selecting different books or crafting a different education plan?

[sonias]

3. I hope a teacher can chime in here

I really don't know what discretion they have in supplementing faulty materials. I certainly hope they do.

The best news I read was that the future of textbooks is electronic, so the Texas published book market is going the way of the dodo bird.

:hi:

[mbperrin]

4. There is no policy against teaching beyond the TEKS. There are certainly

teaching moments regardless of the material required.

For instance, the current TEKS in economics requires that the Reagan tax cuts be taught. Okay. Listen, class, before Ronald Reagan was President, the top tax bracket in this country was 70%, and if your uncle Cyril drilled a gas well that cost $2 million and came up dry, he could deduct 70% of it, or $1.4 million, from his taxes, so he really was only risking $600,000. So he'd try again, and as long as he came up with 1 in 3, he'd be making money and keep going, and all those roughnecks, roustabouts, machine shops, foundries, wellhead companies, cementers, treaters, casers, would all be employed. In fact, the rig count hit 4,000+ during this time.

Now President Reagan talked the Congress into making the top rate 35%. Now your uncle Cyril can only deduct $700,000 from his taxes, and his risk on each well is now $1,300,000 or more than double what it was before. Capital hates risk, and it flees from risk. So what happened? The rig count fell to around 1,000 and has been in that range ever since. Who put your uncle out of the oil and gas bidness and unemployed all those fellas? Ronald Reagan and his accomplices in Congress.

Like that.

And as long as TEKS topics are covered, you are free to introduce enriched content in your course. You're the one with the degrees and the certifications, and central offices everywhere are way too lazy to produce standardized lesson plans, so close the door and teach.

[sonias]

5. Thanks for filing in the blanks mbperrin

Plus for doing the work you do. :applause: :yourock:

[mbperrin]

6. Thanks for all the work you do here, sonias!

I lurk mostly, but check in daily.

We need places like this to get real info.

As for me, I do love my job.

[white cloud]

7. Thanks for the outstanding review!! mbperrin

[sonias]

8. Yahoo News - front page (hangs head in shame)

Yahoo News 3/15/10
U.S. history textbooks could soon be flavored heavily with Texas conservatism

The nation’s public school curriculum may be in for a Texas-sized overhaul, if the Lone Star state’s influential recommendations for changes to social studies, economics and history textbooks are fully ratified later this spring. Last Friday, in a 10-to-5 vote split right down party lines, the Texas State Board of Education approved some controversial right-leaning alterations to what most students in the state—and by extension, in much of the rest of the country—will be studying as received historical and social-scientific wisdom. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.

Don McElroy, who leads the board’s powerful seven-member social conservative bloc, explained that the measure is a way of "adding balance" in the classroom, since "academia is skewed too far to the left." And the board's critics have labeled the move an attempt by political "extremists" to "promote their ideology."

The revised standards have far-reaching implications because Texas is a huge market leader in the school-textbook industry. The enormous print run for Texas textbooks leaves most districts in other states adopting the same course materials, so that the Texas School Board effectively spells out requirements for 80 percent of the nation’s textbook market. That means, for instance, that schools in left-leaning states like Oregon and Vermont could soon be teaching from textbooks that are short on references to Ted Kennedy but long on references to conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly.

What they fail to cover in the story is that McLeroy got tossed in the last election. This is his last ugly hurrah. :grr:

Funny thing is this story got his name wrong anyway - McElroy :rofl:

[sonias]

9. It’s Time to Act: The "Just Educate' Campaign

Texas Freedom Network's 'Just Educate' Campaign

Texas Freedom Network Insider blog 3/16/10
It’s Time to Act: The ‘Just Educate’ Campaign

Have you had enough? Last week’s Texas State Board of Education meeting was yet another debacle for honest and sound education. Last year the board’s creationist faction worked to water down instruction on evolution in science classrooms.

(snip)
So what can you do?

First, sign on to Just Educate, our new campaign to reform the State Board of Education and keep politics out of our children’s public school classrooms. Our campaign will unite parents, business leaders and other concerned citizens behind a common-sense principle: the State Board of Education and our public schools should just educate our schoolchildren, not promote ideological agendas that are undermine their ability to compete and succeed in a 21st century economy.

Second, tell State Board of Education members to stop rewriting history and promoting radical political agendas. E-mail the state board at [e-mail]. In particular, insist that they require social studies students to learn that the Founders barred government from promoting or disfavoring one religion over all others in this country. That principle is a fundamental constitutional protection for religious freedom in America.

Third, contact your local Texas legislator and insist that he or she support legislation in 2011 that reins in the authority of an out-of-control State Board of Education. You can find the names and contact information for your state representative and state senator here. With the help of thousands of concerned Texans, TFN will work with lawmakers to pass legislation next year that stops the state board from abusing its authority over curriculum standards and textbooks to promote political agendas over the education of public school students.

:kick:

[sonias]

10. Creationist Cum McCarthy Booster Incumbent Rejected

Talking Points Memo 3/8/10
Creationist-Cum-McCarthy-Booster Incumbent Rejected By Texas Republicans

The top conservative activist on the powerful Texas Board of Education, who rejects evolution and has pushed for a revisionist right-wing U.S. history curriculum, is on the way out, after a moderate candidate defeated him in a tight primary last week.

For months now, TPMmuckraker has been covering Don McLeroy as a major player in the battle over the drafting of nationally influential history textbook standards by the Texas board.

Lobbyist Thomas Ratliff edged out McLeroy 50.4%-49.6% in a GOP primary for the seat McLeroy has held since 1999.

Close as it was, Ratliff's win is significant because he represented a clear alternative to McLeroy, and he pulled through in a deeply conservative district. McLeroy's home county went 64-35 for McCain in '08, and no Democrat is even running for the board seat.

We have to keep taking comfort in McLeroy's rejection by his own crazy party.

:kick:

[sonias]

11. Colbert on the State Board of "Edjukashun"

Texas Tribune 3/17/10
TribBlog: Colbert on the State Board of "Edjukashun"
It was only a matter of time, what with the onslaught of national coverage and dueling editorials in The New York Times and on Fox News, before The Colbert Report would jump into the fray with it’s own satirical take on the Texas history textbook situation (transcript below; full video below.). And one wonders, with the ongoing merging of news and entertainment, if more readers outside Texas might well get their Texas "news" from Colbert than even the aforementioned national news juggernauts.

Of course, those who ridicule the conservatives rewriting of history in meetings over the last year — never so on display as in the State Board of Education meeting last week — hardly needed Colbert to cue up the laughter in Wednesday's show. As former Texas Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby wrote in a comment on one of our SBOE blog posts last week, "Texas — From Lone Star State to Laughing Stock State."

With video!!

:kick: