Guest Column: Please, No State Board of Embarrassment
Lately the State Board of Education has been caught in the culture wars crossfire. Take the example of last year’s revision of the social studies curriculum. From one side, liberal comedian Jon Stewart mocks the reasoning behind SBOE decisions. From the other side, the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute assigns a “D” grade to the outcome of the process.
Usually when a group takes heat from the left and from the right, it’s setting a course somewhere in the moderate middle. Not so the SBOE when it revised the social studies curriculum. Or when it revised the science ...
Comments (9)
Diwanna Zapalac via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Couldn't have said it better myself!!!
Rick Chafey via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The assumption that the SBOE represents the students is false. They represent the taxpayers who pay the bills. Public education has always been sold as benefitting the common good, and that should remain the focus, not an individual entitlement, which does not exist.
David Walls
To get the facts on the SBOE social studies standards visit http://www.juststatethefacts.com/
Julie Clegg McKain via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The "common good" . . . a concept too quickly forgotten and too easily cast aside . . . Having well-educated students (and thus a well educated work force) is one of the best "common goods" we can have in a democratic society.
Brett Baldwin
Unfortunately, Mr. Soto has a liberal/progressive bias and tries to disguise it my sounding reasonable.
However, here are the facts:
Mr. Soto claims the Fordham Institute is conservative; however The Fordham Institute receives funding from the Gates Foundation, well-known as a liberal group which is advocating heavily for liberal biased national education standards, which is an Obama administration priority that is widely rejected in Texas by both Gov. Perry and the thousands of Texans parents, educators, and concerned citizens who spoke out in favor of the newly-adopted social studies standards.
“The most obvious problem with this report [Fordham Institute} is that it is full of dramatic overstatements, trivial details, and flat-out lies about the content of Texas’ social studies standards,” said Jonathan Saenz, director of legislative affairs for Liberty Institute. “This is just another Washington voice, Johnny-come-lately trying to punish Texas for rejecting Obama’s attempted takeover of state curriculum standards. Texas will not be bullied by a biased report that gets our history standards wrong. A piece of friendly advice to Washington elites and other late-comers on this
issue: read the standards!”
Mr. Soto either has not read the Texas Standards or is lying about the Texas Standards.
Either way he does not deserve to be on the SBOE.
S T
Brett-
Thank you for illustrating the need to repair the education system in Texas.
To put it more simply, your argument is not cogent.
Brett Baldwin
ST,
Too bad I was educated in Arizona, scored in the Top 1% of the Nation on my SAT scores, went to college on an academic scholarship, and graduated with a dual major in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Sadly, you are just another angry left wing loon wasting your time defending the indefensible and then you think that makes you smart.
It is people like you left wing loons that are destroying public education. Eventually, only left wing loons will send them children into the public schools (even left wing Obama won't put his kids into the D.C. public schools).
Frances Demps via Texas Tribune on Facebook
According to our illustrious SBOE the United States is no longer a democracy. We are now a constitutional republic. Guess some of them think students are too dumb to understand the difference "democratic" and "Democratic". So they completely wiped out any reference to the 'd' word. Maybe they themselves don't know the difference.
Frances Demps via Texas Tribune on Facebook
My above comment references the new 8th-grade U.S. History standards.