Constitutional Law

The Fight Continues Against Texas' Textbook Standards

By Terri Burke, Executive Director, ACLU of Texas

Last week was a fascinating week to watch the power of the religious right in Texas. Although we launched an enormous effort to convince the 'moderates' on the Texas State Board of Education to vote down ideologically tainted standards for students' textbooks, they were ultimately approved on a 9-5 party line vote. Don McLeroy, the former board president and now lame-duck board member and chief proponent of the most outrageous changes in the curriculum standards, spent most of his time outside the meeting room frequently huddled with Liberty Legal and Texas Eagle Forum folks, who, it became obvious, were the authors of all of his amendments. In the end, though, the more moderate board members caved into the fringe right.

Despite this loss, Texas heard our message loud and clear. Thanks to you, the State Board of Ed received more than 40,000 comments on the proposed social studies curriculum standards; of which at least 12,000 came from ACLU supporters. (As a point of comparison, the board received just 3,000 comments during the last big text book controversy when they wanted all students to learn about the 'strengths and weaknesses' of evolution as part of the science curriculum standards.)

The fight continues. With a number of state legislators outraged and criticism mounting from historians, and even the Bush administration's Secretary of Education Rod Paige, there is steam for pushing the engines of change. Next? We will work with the legislature to rein in this out-of-control bunch, limiting its role to its constitutional mandate or requiring true experts to write the standards and ensuring legislative approval of the nominees. Check out the recommendations we included in our report, 'The Texas State Board of Education: A Case of Abuse of Power.'

And there's more you can do to make sure that the Texas State Board of Education doesn't have the final say as to what's taught in social studies classrooms in your state: Demand that textbook publishers keep Texas's biased curriculum out of schools around the country.

And thank you again for taking action; with your help, we will keep this kind of extremism in check.

Full post as published by Blog of Rights on May 26, 2010 (boomark / email).