The actual debate over social studies curriculum standards at the State Board of Education on Wednesday could not compete with the sideshow. 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.
A legislative hearing suddenly gave way Wednesday to second-guessing of Bill White's fiscal management of Houston, and a swift rebuttal from the Democratic nominee for governor.
State Board of Education members resumed their volatile debate over social studies standards Wednesday as the panel neared its first vote on what Texas students will be taught in U.S. history, government and other classes over the next decade.
AUSTIN, Tex. — Even as a panel of educators laid out a vision Wednesday for national standards for public schools, the Texas school board was going in a different direction, holding hearings on changes to its social studies curriculum that would portray conservatives in a more positive light, emphasize the role of Christianity in American history and include Republican political philosophies in textbooks.
Though American history has been the prime battleground for ideologues on the State Board of Education, members from both sides of the aisle showed Wednesday that modern-day American political agendas can be transported across the continent and through time with relative ease.
Texas is changing, and few Texans know the details better than Steve Murdock. The professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston has twice been listed among the most influential Texans — by now-defunct Texas Business in 1997, and by Texas Monthly, which dubbed him "The Prophet" in 2005. He was appointed the first State Demographer of Texas in 2001. In 2007, George W. Bush tapped him to be the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Since the 1940s, the whooping crane has climbed from a population of just 16 to become a triumphant token of North American conservation efforts. Now the bird is the focus of a lawsuit that pits the environmental movement's mightiest weapon, the Endangered Species Act, against principles held near and dear in Texas — that pits the rights of private property holders and of the state against the federal government.
A Denison man with 35 years of law enforcement experience was named ombudsman Wednesday for the Texas Youth Commission, a job vacant for four months after Gov. Rick Perry's previous appointee was indicted.
The state is revoking the accreditation of a San Marcos charter school and has warned an Austin charter school that its accreditation is in jeopardy, Texas Education Agency announced Wednesday.
