State Board of Education Continues Assault on School Children of Texas

    If education is one of your key issues, you will want to read this email from the Texas Freedom Network about the current decisions of the State Board of Education (SBOE).  This particular article lays out what the Board recently decided but also gives a list of suggested actions citizens might take to combat the Board. 

Creationists Are Preparing for a New Assault

on Science Education in Texas

Help Ensure that Texas Students Get an Education Based on Sound Science

The religious right is preparing for the second stage in its reckless campaign to push junk science into Texas public school classrooms. The State Board of Education voted today to adopt new instructional materials for science classes this coming spring. Those materials will be based on new science curriculum standards the board adopted last year – standards that promote creationist arguments against evolutionary science in our children’s classrooms.

Find out below how you can stop efforts to undermine science in Texas schools and ensure that students get a sound education that prepares them to succeed in college and a 21st-century economy!

What Has Happened So Far

Last year the Texas Freedom Network and other supporters of sound science education succeeded in removing from the new science standards a requirement that students learn phony “weaknesses” of evolutionary theory. But the state board’s far-right faction rejected appeals from distinguished scientists, including Nobel laureates, not to water down instruction on science in other ways. In fact, the board passed new standards based on creationist arguments against evolution: one challenging the core scientific concept of natural selection and another questioning overwhelming evidence in the fossil record that supports evolutionary science.

What’s Up Next

The state board has asked publishers to submit instructional materials that cover the new science standards, and 18 publishers have agreed to do so this spring. The Texas Education Agency is now accepting applications from teachers, scholars and other citizens to review those materials. The state board will then consider those reviews when it decides which materials to adopt in March (for high school classes) and July (for classes in Grades 5-8).

What Can You Do?

It’s critical that supporters of sound science take action to prevent far-right pressure groups and extremists on the state board from hijacking the adoption of these new instructional materials for Texas classrooms.

Volunteer to serve on a panel that will review instructional materials submitted by publishers in the spring. Review panels typically meet over the course of one or two days in Austin. The Texas Education Agency will cover the travel and lodging costs of review panelists. Click here to access the State Review Panel Nomination Form.

Sign on to the Texas Freedom Network’s Just Educate campaign to reform the State Board of Education and keep the personal agendas of state board politicians out of classrooms.

Stay informed by subscribing to TFN News Clips and by reading our blog, TFN Insider.

Donate to the Texas Freedom Network and help us stop the far right’s well-funded assaults on the education of Texas schoolchildren.