Just as a reminder about what we’re doing in education, I hope every teacher and administrator will take three minutes and view this video (that allows you some time to boggle).
Surely you know who Tom Peters is. (If not, please confess in comments, and I’ll endeavor to guide you to the information you need.)
This post is seventh in a series on the education planks of the 2010 Texas Democratic Party Platform.
This is an unofficial version published in advance of the final version from the Texas Democrats, but I expect very few changes.
Generally I’ll not comment on these planks just yet, but I must say that I take delight in the perhaps unintentional commentary offered in the title of this plank. I suspect the intent was to point to the bias of the State Board of Education, an imbalance of political views, and not to the sanity of the board. But, I could be wrong — the title may be just an official Democratic labeling of the Board’s actions as unbalanced behavior.
REFORM OF THE UNBALANCED STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
The right-wing Republican extremists who have dominated the State Board of Education have made a laughingstock of our state’s process for developing and implementing school curriculum standards that determine what our students learn. The damage they have done is no laughing matter. In rewriting the curriculum for social studies, English language arts, and science, they repeatedly have dismissed the sound advice of professional educators. Personal ideology, not high academic standards, has guided their work. Their skewed vision slights the contributions of racial and ethnic minorities. Their slanted versions of American history and of science mislead students and violate the separation of church and state. They use loaded language to favor the roles of right-wing organizations and activists. Led by a Rick Perry appointee as chair, this State Board of Education wants to indoctrinate, not educate, the schoolchildren of Texas. Their actions are unlikely to encourage a company to relocate and bring jobs to Texas. Any substantive changes to curriculum must be reviewed by non-partisan experts, and that review must be made public prior to any changes in curriculum by the State Board.
Texas Democrats will realign the State Board of Education with mainstream Texas values, will realign the state curriculum with objective reality and the facts of history and science, and will insist on the exercise of sober fiduciary responsibility for the Permanent School Fund, exposing and prohibiting conflicts of interest.
One might have thought it improbable, if not impossible.
Texas State Board of Education Member Cynthia Dunbar, in a parting shot, concedes the grounds upon which a challenge might be made to the gutting of social studies standards she wishes to accomplish today. Is there any doubt her intent is solely religious?
Ben Sargent, Austin American-Statesman (GoComics) March 17, 2010
(I first saw a Ben Sargent cartoon published in the Daily Utah Chronicle in about 1974. 35 years of great stuff from that guy. He officially retired from the Austin American-Statesman in 2009, running one cartoon a week now.)
Tuesday, March 16 was the 259th anniversary of the birth of James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, the sponsor of the Bill of Rights, the life-long campaigner for good government based on knowledge of the errors of history, especially in the area of religious freedom.
Under social studies standards proposed by the Texas State Board of Education, Texas students will never study Madison’s views, or Madison’s Constitution, without intervention by their parents or good teachers who run some risk to teach the glories of American history to students.
Newspaper stories across the nation concentrated on Madison’s birthday expressed revulsion and rejection of the crabbed and cramped views of the Texas SBOE, and the cup of revulsion runneth over.
For example, explaining an insulting cut of Texas and African American heroes, Texas Tribune explains:
Tuskegee Airman Commander dumped: Board member McLeroy made the motion to pull Oveta Culp Hobby and Benjamin O. Davis from this standard. Hobby — a Houston newspaper publisher, the director the federal health department in the 1950s, and the wife of Texas Governor William P. Hobby — shows up elsewhere, in the 7th grade curriculum. Davis, however, does not. Davis was the first African-American general in the U.S. Air Force and the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen in the World War II. The board did insert a phrase on the “contributions of the Tuskegee Airman” in the next section.
Straightforward explanation. If it raises your ire, it’s not because the writing is inflammatory, but because the facts are so clearly presented.
Dr. Steve Schafersman will testify on proposed new standards for social studies in Texas public schools, at a hearing before the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) scheduled for today, January 13, 2009.
Texas State Board of Education Public Hearing
Austin, Texas; Wednesday, 2009 January 13
I am grateful for the opportunity to address you about Social Studies standards for which I am testifying as a private citizen. Tomorrow you will begin your work to adopt the new Social Studies TEKS. I closely read and evaluated the proposed Grade 8 Social Studies, High School U. S. History, U. S. Government, World History, and World Geography standards and found them to be quite satisfactory. The standards were extremely comprehensive, balanced, fair-minded, and honest. The members of the panels who wrote them did an outstanding job and I was very impressed by their knowledge and professionalism. I urge that you adopt these Social Studies standards without change.
My experience with this Board leads me to suspect that some of you don’t want to adopt these excellent standards–written by social studies curriculum experts and teachers–without change. After all, these standards were written by experts and some of you feel obliged to stand up to the experts. Some of you may want to change some of the standards to correspond to your own political and religious beliefs, such as the mistaken notions that the United States is a Christian nation, that we do not have a secular government, or that separation of church and state is a myth. Some of you may want to add more unnecessary information about Christian documents or Christian history in America. If some of you do wish to make such changes, I request that you restrain yourselves. Please resist the temptation to engage in the same behavior some of you exhibited last year when you perverted the Science standards and embarrassed the citizens of Texas by engaging in pseudoscientific anti-intellectual behavior. While the Texas State Board of Education has a long and proud history of anti-intellectualism, the economic conditions today demand that we stop that practice and return to professionalism and respect for academic achievement so that our children have a future in which they will use their minds to make a living in intellectual pursuits and not their limbs in a service economy.
During the adoption of the science standards, some Board members amended the Biology and Earth and Space Science standards by engaging in fast talking, omitting pertinent information about what was being changed, offering bogus “compromises” that were not really fair compromises, and referring to “experts” who were in fact pseudoscientists and not real experts at all. I hope to not witness the same behavior tomorrow but I am pessimistic. Two pseudo-historians, David Barton and Peter Marshall, were appointed as “experts” and there is plenty of evidence available that demonstrates that these two gentlemen are preachers and polemicists for their radical agendas, not legitimate history experts.
I urge the rational and conservative Board members–whom I hope still make up a majority of this Board–to resist proposed radical amendments that attempt to insert bogus histories of American exceptionalism, America’s presumed Christian heritage as the source of our liberties and Constitutional principles, and other historical myths perpetrated by the American Religious Right. I urge you to vote No to such radical amendments, not Abstain or your radical opponents will gain the same advantage that they enjoyed during the amendment process for the Science standards, where they were delighted when some of you abstained or did not vote since that made it easier for them to obtain majorities which allowed them to win several amendments that made changes detrimental to science education. Unlike last year, when you were prevented from consulting your legitimate Science experts during debate, please consult your genuine Social Studies experts, Texas Professors Kracht, Hodges, and de la Teja. Please try to avoid the same mistakes with the Social Studies adoption process that occurred with the Science standards adoption, so no one will be able to accuse you of being anti-intellectual.
Just when you thought it was safe to take a serious summer vacation, finish the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin, and catch up on a couple of novels . . .
The sharks of education policy are back.
Or the long knives are about to come out (vicious historical reference, of course, but I’m wagering the anti-education folks didn’t catch it). Pick your metaphor.
Our friend Steve Schafersman sent out an e-mail alert this morning:
The Expert Reviews of the proposed TexasSocial Studies curriculum are now available at
David Barton, President, WallBuilders
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
Jesus Francisco de la Teja, Professor and Chair, Department of History, Texas State University
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
Daniel L. Dreisbach, Professor, American University Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
Lybeth Hodges, Professor, History, Texas Woman’s University
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
Jim Kracht, Associate Dean and Professor, College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
Peter Marshall, President, Peter Marshall Ministries
Review of Current Social Studies TEKS
You can download their review as a pdf file.
Three of these reviewers are legitimate, knowledgeable, and respected academics who undoubtedly did a fair, competent, and professional job. The other three are anti-church- state separation, anti-secular public government, and pseudoscholars and pseudohistorians. I expect their contributions to be biased, unprofessional, and pseudoscholarly. Here are the bad ones:
Barton may be the worst of the three. He founded Wallbuilders to deliberately destroy C-S separation and promote Fundamentalist Christianity in US government. Just about everything he has written is unhistorical and inaccurate. For example, Barton has published numerous “quotes” about C-S separation made by the Founding Fathers that upon investigation turned out to be hoaxes. Here’s what Senator Arlen Specter had to say about Barton:
Probably the best refutation of Barton’s argument simply is to quote his own exegesis of the First Amendment: “Today,” Barton says, “we would best understand the actual context of the First Amendment by saying, ‘Congress shall make no law establishing one Christian denomination as the national denomination. ‘ ” In keeping with Barton’s restated First Amendment, Congress could presumably make a law establishing all Christian denominations as the national religion, and each state could pass a law establishing a particular Christian church as its official religion.
All of this pseudoscholarship would hardly be worth discussing, let alone disproving, were it not for the fact that it is taken so very seriously by so many people.
I am sure these six will participate in a Great Texas History Smackdown before our crazy SBOE. Perhaps this will finally sicken enough citizens that they will finally vote to get rid of the SBOE, either directly or indirectly. Be sure to listen to this hearing on the web audio. Even better, the web video might be working so you can watch the SBOE Carnival Sideshow.
Steven Schafersman, Ph.D.
President, Texas Citizens for Science
The non-expert experts were appointed by Don McLeroy before the Texas Senate refused to confirm his temporary chairmanship of the State Board of Education. The good McLeroy may have done as chairman is interred with his dead chairmanship; the evil he did lives on. (Under McLeroy and Barton’s reading of history and literature, most students won’t catch the reference for the previous sentence.)
Betsy Oney teaches in Arlington, Texas. She’s a frontline soldier in the fight to educate our kids.
She also reads the newspapers and pays attention to what is going on at the highest levels in Texas government. From her view, she describes better than anyone else I’ve seen, the problem facing Texas Gov. Rick Perry right now, after the Texas State Senate rejected Perry’s nominee to head the State Board of Education, Don McLeroy.
Texas governor in a dilemma over education board pick
By BETSY ONEY
Special to the Star-Telegram
Gov. Rick Perry is in something of a Catch-22.
It started two years ago when he appointed dentist Don McLeroy to chair the State Board of Education. McLeroy is described by his many supporters as a “good and decent man,” and of that we can be sure.
McLeroy’s appointment came after the 80th Legislature adjourned, so he had to be confirmed during this year’s session. The confirmation failed in the Senate.
McLeroy’s supporters blame that on the fact that he’s a Christian. Records show that this Senate, and the House Public Education Committee in a July 16 hearing, were concerned not that he’s Christian but that McLeroy politicized Texas children’s education and led the board and the Texas education system into the spotlight. And what Texans and Americans saw in that light was a fairly grotesque parade of a few people — a majority faction of the board led by McLeroy — who listened to ideology instead of experts and were intent on imposing an antiquated education system on Texas children.
From that same elected board, Perry now must decide on a new chairman who, like McLeroy, will serve without scrutiny until the next legislative session, in 2011.
Perry’s decision is his Catch-22.
He probably won’t consider a Democrat. That leaves nine Republican possibilities. Seven are the radical members responsible for politicizing children’s education. They voted in lock step on a range of issues that individually and collectively have been widely seen by educators and lawyers as anything from illegal to unconstitutional to damaging children. Nominating from that pool might yield a different management style than McLeroy offered, but the ideology, intent and backward direction would remain the same.
The two remaining Republicans are conservative, but not extremists. Both District 11’s Pat Hardy of Fort Worth and District 15’s Bob Craig of Lubbock are well-qualified and would lead Texas public education in the right direction. In contrast to the radical members, they would be responsive to the changing educational needs that the future demands as well as to the rich diversity of children in our population.
Although Hardy has been mentioned as a nominee by senators, she’s recommending Craig.
Craig, an attorney, is a logical choice. He’s served on the board since 2002 and before that served on the Lubbock school board for 14 years. Craig is a “good and decent man,” but in contrast to McLeroy, his voting record and conciliatory demeanor show him to be a rational, uniting public education supporter. He listens to educators and experts. He respects the opinions of others. He votes in the interest of all children.
It’s clear that Perry could not make a better choice than Bob Craig. The Catch-22 is that by appointing a nonextremist, Perry risks losing support from his biggest donors, the religious right.
These donors see benefit in turning public education into religious education at taxpayer expense. They see benefit in keeping critical thinking out of the classroom. Their money is essential in his campaign against Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison in the next gubernatorial primary election.
If Perry appoints from the pool of radical rights, the voting public will be alerted that he’s sacrificing our children’s education and Texas’ future for his own political interests. So he’ll lose votes.
Money and ideology vs. public’s interest and, ultimately, its confidence. What a dilemma! Stay tuned.
Betsy Oney of Fort Worth holds a master of education degree and is a master reading teacher (and English-as-a-second-language teacher) in the Arlington school district.
House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 3, the two identical bills being considered in the Legislature now that will change Texas education laws for student assessment, tracking, documentation, and accountability, also affect high school graduation requirements. Unfortunately, anti-education lobbyists have been very successful and the HB3-SB3 bill as currently written delays the implementation of the 4×4 high school curriculum for many years. This will have a very deleterious effect on Texas science and math education, college readiness, allow continuation of the senior-year math and science layoff, and remove the need for a variety of 12th-grade capstone science and math courses.
Yes, you need to call your Texas representatives. Schafersman gives the numbers. Drop by his new blog, get details, get on the phone.
In Texas, however, evolution and science education are under assault today as the State Board of Education (SBOE) looks at revising science standards for public schools. Creationists have been sharpening their knives for months, with a stiff-necked creationist heading SBOE as a fifth columnist.
SBOE votes today (perhaps already, but I can’t find the story of a vote). At issue is the recommendations by scientists, educators and parents to teach evolution without creationist language that misleads students. SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy has vowed to insert more religion into science classes. The board is nearly evenly split between creationists and backers of science, so the vote could go either way.
Here at the Bathtub we’ll feature testimony from science supporters in a few posts, as we can snag them from witnesses.
McLeroy and his supporters at SBOE worked hard to stack the witness list, to prevent testimony from parents, teachers, scientists and educators who all favor new standards that eliminate a decade-old statement about “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution theory, hoary old creationist propaganda that has no place in a curriculum for the 21st century. Several science witnesses were bumped from testifying, and the board was quite rude to some of America’s best scientists, appearing to fear what the scientists had to say.
@af_df @MMilesDISD @dallasschools I'd love to be held accountable for my 100% passing rate, including all minorities & special ed. Not this.Splashed: 23 hours ago
RT @NPCA: Are you a shutterbug? We found a fun photo contest, a gorgeous Instagram feed, & more this week on Best of the Net: http://t.co/x…Splashed: 23 hours ago
RT @Isis_Agent: Man am I glad that we passed that Infrastructure Bill....oh wait, that's right.....we didn't. Another #Republican and #Tea…Splashed: 1 day ago
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Posted by Ed Darrell 
