School's open! Drive carefully. And keep just as close an eye on what the State Board of Education (SBOE) is up to in Austin. Last week, Jeffrey Weiss, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, asked teachers how they are coping with the law passed by the Texas legislature a couple of years ago calling for, as Weiss put it, "the enrichment curriculum to include, right up there with fine arts and technology applications, 'religious literature, including the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and New Testament, and its impact on history and literature.'" He didn't get any teachers to respond, so we can't form any conclusions about what the introduction of religious literature into the curriculum is leading to.
In somewhat related news, The Dallas Morning News' William McKenzie reports on Kay Bailey Hutchison's campaign pledge to reverse the GOP's "shrinking majorities" in Texas. McKenzie suggests she might need to rein in the social conservatives to do that. He asks, "will she speak out if the State Board of Education goes off on a tangent in its upcoming decision about what Texas students need to know about social studies?"
We might find out the answer to that question sooner rather than later. The SBOE has taken the first step towards making conservative politics part of the basic knowledge and skills that every Texas schoolchild will have to learn to graduate. The SBOE appointed committees to draft new social studies curriculum standards. What they've come up with sounds like a new front in the partisan political wars will be fought in our children's classrooms. According to the Houston Chronicle, the first draft of new standards calls for students "to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority." Explosive stuff this. "David Bradley, R-Beaumont, one of the conservative leaders, figures the current draft will pass a preliminary vote along party lines 'once the napalm and smoke clear the room.'"
The standards will be finalized next spring, before Texas voters have another chance to dump these extremist political partisans from the SBOE. But voters should do just that in November, 2010, or whenever incumbents appear on a ballot again. The quality of education in Texas is at continual risk until Texas voters remove these members from the SBOE entirely: Terri Leo, David Bradley, Barbara Cargill, Cynthia Dunbar, Gail Lowe, Don McLeroy and Ken Mercer.
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