This post is the third in a series of blogs of I’ve written following the actions of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) at their January meetings to approve revisions to the state’s K-12 social studies curriculum. Known as TEKS, these standards will determine the learning goals for Texas students for the next decade and will also impact the publication of textbooks that will be used nationwide. (I cover this more in the previous blogs, Hijacking History and Hijacking History, Part 2.) This post will cover the final two days of the meeting where elected members of the SBOE went through the proposed curriculum revisions and voted on changes of their own. Ultimately, the proceedings exhausted the time allotted for discussion and approval of the revisions, postponing the final vote to the May meeting of the SBOE.
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The SBOE is composed of 15 members who are elected from districts based on equal population representation. Elections to the board are conducted on a partisan basis, and the recent meetings demonstrated just how detrimental this can be to the educational process. Brian Thevenot of the Texas Tribune has provided excellent coverage of these meetings, and his description of the approval process is no exception: continue reading…
