SECTION 1. A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.

Hoping for postings from someone besides me, I’ve held off contributing for the last month or so. The State Board meeting this week has attracted plenty of attention, and given us plenty to write about, but no posts have been submitted.

When I agreed to set this site up and maintain it, I didn’t envision being its only contributor. If we don’t have some more contributors by the end of May, that will tell me that it’s time for the site to come down.

Anyone who’s registered at this website is eligible to submit posts, so don’t hold back. News, comments, links, thoughts—it’s all worth sharing.

In an op-ed published March 29 in the American-Statesman, State Representative Donna Howard reviews the evolution of the State Board, which began life as a three-member body consisting of the governor, the comptroller, and the secretary of state. Observing that

the only constitutional reason for the existence of the Texas SBOE is to manage the Permanent School Fund

she concludes

At the very least, we should depoliticize our state board by taking partisan politics out of the mix. The last resort would be to abolish the board altogether…. The best solution, I suspect, lies somewhere in between.

Self-described liberal historian Jonathan Zimmerman proposes a truce in  the battles over the Texas social-studies standards. In a Statesman op-ed which refers to two current best sellers on United States history, Zimmerman advocates adopting both books:

Instead of bickering about the “correct” version of the past, the Texas school board should decree that every high school history class use both of these texts. That would teach students that Americans disagree — vehemently — about the making and the meaning of their nation. And it would require the kids to sort out the differences on their own.

Zimmerman discusses his proposal in a Talk of the Nation interview with NPR’s Neal Conan. One caller, a social-studies teacher for 20 years, says he’s “increasingly surprised at all the hand-wringing over textbooks and all the money that’s put into them” because “these kids don’t read the textbook.” Making the same proposal as in his op-ed, Zimmerman says:

… I have two adolescent kids, and I would much rather in their history class that the textbooks be both A People’s History and A Patriot’s History than any single textbook, because I think that if they —that is, my children and others— were forced to compare these interpretations, I think they’d get a better idea of what history actually is and does.

Zimmerman doesn’t make the connection, but if the kids were let in on the controversy they might find the textbooks worth reading.

In his article, “In Texas Curriculum Fight, Identity Politics Leans Right” (the Week in Review section of today’s New York Times), Sam Tanenhaus takes a look at the State Board’s social-studies battles in historical terms:

The social studies curriculum recently approved by the Texas Board of Education, which will put a conservative stamp on textbooks, was received less as a pedagogical document than as the latest provocation in America’s seemingly endless culture wars.

…

In reality, this controversy is the latest version of a debate that reaches back many decades and is perhaps essential in a heterogeneous democracy whose identity has long been in flux.

What’s new about the current controversy, Tanenhaus concludes, is that

Today it is not regional or ethnic identity, but ideological commitment that threatens to submerge larger “national myths.” … As Americans struggle to see where they are going, they continue to gaze fondly at the past — and to see in it what they like.

Another Texas Tribune writer who reports on the State Board is Brian Thevenot, who posted several articles on the recent SBOE meeting in Austin:

• TribBlog: History Hearings Off to Hot Start
• TribBlog: TEA Rips Fox News
• The SBOE Gets Medieval
• The Revision Thing (coauthored with Niran Babalola)
• TribBlog: SBOE Rejects Church-State Wall (Updated)
• “We’re Outnumbered”

These articles vividly portray the triumphs of the religious right, and the frustration of the educationist minority.

Abby Rapoport covers the SBOE for the Texas Tribune. The day after the March 2 primary election she wrote

The most prominent symbol of Christian conservative power on the State Board of Education, former chair Don McLeroy, lost his seat Tuesday by a razor-thin margin, and with the loss, the board likely won’t be quite as much of a Christian Conservative flash point any more.

What it will be, however, is anybody’s guess.

The article goes on to describe the other changes resulting from the election, including the results of the District 10 race:

Conservative bloc member Cynthia Dunbar did not seek re-election, and the Republican primary in her district will go to a run-off between her preferred successor, Bryan Russell, and Marsha Farney, who ended the first round in a virtual tie.

A more recent article relates speculations from various sources about the effects on the board both of the election results and of the increased public awareness—or not—of the SBOE’s importance:

“People are paying attention. A lot more people are paying attention,” says Tim Tuggey, who ran unsuccessfully for the District 5 seat of incumbent Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio. The issues “hit them right where they live.”

and

Former member Dan Montgomery, who lost to Mercer in 2006, isn’t so sure. “I know the media’s tried” to increase awareness, he says. “But I can almost guarantee you even my neighbors didn’t know I was on State Board of Education when I was — and they were teachers.” He thinks that isn’t likely to change.

Of course that unlikely change is this website’s goal.

The Statesman’s Kate Alexander has been reporting on the recent SBOE meeting in Austin, which provided her with plenty of colorful material.  Her first article focuses on what she termed a “sideshow” surrounding the fight over the social studies curriculum:

A gaggle of television cameras, including several from Fox News and its affiliates, jammed into the meeting room to chronicle the Texas Textbook War, as the news network dubbed it.

The war pits defenders of traditional values who say American history is under attack by politically correct revisionism against board critics who are calling for a “smarter State Board of Education.”

Jason Embry, also of the Statesman, adds a delightful detail:

At one point, board member David Bradley handed cookies to the Fox crew, ignoring the rest of the folks at the press table.

Alexander’s second article reports on the meeting’s substance:

Sex, money, religion and race.

State Board of Education members discussed it all Thursday, delivering a riveting drama as they trudged through another day of debate about social studies curriculum standards.

John Kelso comments that

People should have to take an American history quiz to show their expertise on the subject before they’re allowed to comment on it.

This week’s State Board meeting, on revisions of the Texas social studies curriculum standards, once again drew the attention of the national newspaper of record, in an article by James McKinley. The article explains that the revised curriculum

… will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The standards which the board revised were developed by a panel of teachers. Voting in favor of the revisions were all ten Republicans and one Democrat; the other four Democrats were opposed.

The  New York Times Magazine‘s February 14 issue includes a long article by Russell Shorto, “How Christian Were the Founders?“, on the Texas State Board of Education. As its title suggests, the article’s main focus is the Board’s seven right-wing members’ conviction that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and their campaign to inject their view into Texas textbooks.

The first of a series of debates featuring local and statewide candidates is scheduled for Thursday, February 11 on the UT campus. There will be two debates among State Board of Education candidates, one for Republicans and one for Democrats, but all are running for the District 5 seat; no District 10 candidates are appearing.

For directions and the debate schedule, follow this link.