It's Not Just Us Saying It

This week, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (an education think tank) released its State of State U.S. History Standards for 2011. How did Texas perform? Not well. The Fordham Institute concluded that Texas’ new Social Studies curriculum “combines a rigidly thematic and theory-based social studies structure with a politicized distortion of history. The result is both unwieldy and troubling, avoiding clear historical explanation while offering misrepresentations at every turn.” As the ACLU of Texas documented last spring, Texas’ failing curriculum is the result of a process that allows members of the Texas State Board of Education to inject their personal political beliefs into the curriculum content. The Texas Legislature must take steps to ensure that educational experts, not ideologues, determine what ends up in our children’s classrooms!