Archive for the ‘Evolution’ Category
So who’s going to stop them?
January 23rd, 2008
Star-Telegram.com: | 01/19/2008 | Evolution’s status may be debated by state board
The state’s public school curriculum, called Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, says students must learn “the theory of biological evolution.” Section 3A of the biology curriculum states that students must use critical thinking to make informed decisions, including analyzing a theory’s “strengths and weaknesses.”
“They do not cover the weaknesses of evolution,” said Don McLeroy, chairman of the state board, of the state’s science textbooks. “They present evolution as an absolute fact.”
McLeroy, an outspoken creationist, said he doesn’t want changes in the state’s biology standards. But some say that doesn’t mean that creationism or intelligent design, both held by the U.S. Supreme Court to be religious theories that are barred from the classroom, won’t seep into Texas’ curriculum.
Just think, with the decision of the majority of the Texas SBOE to reject a textbook for reasons other than failing to meet basic state curriculum requirements, McLeroy now doesn’t even have to bother with the analyzing the “strengths and weaknesses” rule to reject textbooks that teach evolution. Before, the Board would have to go through the motions of documenting that the textbook didn’t demonstrate the weaknesses of evolution in order to reject the book. The Board could have demanded the publishers to include so many “weaknesses” in the textbook so as to make the evolution section appear a travesty of unscientific reasoning.
But now, McLeroy and friends won’t even have to bother. They believe they can just decide to reject a book for any reason. Their decision to reject the math textbook sets the precedent for the upcoming selection of biology textbooks. Unless Attorney General Greg Abbott steps in now to stop the board, he will find it very difficult to do so in the future. He avoided having to explicitly define the Board’s authority in 2006. It seems to me, that the Board is calling him out to make him actually block Board action in rejecting a textbook. Will he do it? I guess it all depends who is funding his next run for higher office.
Technorati Tags: Texas State Board of Education, Texas SBOE, Don McLeroy, textbook approval, evolution, Terri Leo , Greg Abbott
Because they don’t like it
January 17th, 2008
The state Board of Education’s unusual decision to reject a math textbook used by Dallas and 70 other Texas school districts has evolved into a power struggle over the approval of classroom materials used across the state.
At issue is whether the 15-member state board can reject any book it wants for any reason it wants. That’s what some conservative board members, led by board president Don McLeroy, say they are allowed to do.
So much for local control.
In Dallas, officials rolled out Everyday Mathematics books in kindergarten through sixth grade at 19 schools with low math scores during the 2000-01 school year. By the end of the year, only two of those schools still had low scores; a year later, none of them did, said Camille Malone, DISD’s director of mathematics.
The district now uses the book to teach the nearly 79,000 students in kindergarten through fifth grade at all elementary schools. Ms. Malone said games and hands-on examples help the students develop computation skills.
“The TAKS test is a test of concepts as well as skills,” she said. “Had we not had a conceptually based program, I’m not sure we would have had the achievement we have had on TAKS.”
So because some board members are more interested in establishing the authority of their beliefs, Dallas can not use a textbook that it believes has been instrumental in improving it’s math scores.
Terri Leo’s comments have to be among the most pathetic.
Ms. Leo said. “I object very much being taken to task for rejecting a book that I actually read.”
Apparently it doesn’t matter to her that the textbook was recommended by a review committee, the TEA commissioner, and probably several textbook committees at various districts not to mention the teachers who have been using the textbook in the classroom for a couple years. Shouldn’t they be the ones “objecting” rather than Leo?
I’m pretty sure this is just a continuation of Leo’s attempt for the SBOE to regain absolute control of textbook selection which suffered a major setback in the fall of 2006. Why now? Because biology textbooks are coming up for approval soon. And if the board “establishes” it’s right to reject textbooks for any reason, then the board can easily reject books that fail to “teach the controversy” regarding evolution.
BTW, Terri Leo is up for re-election this year. Unfortunately, the Democrats don’t have a candidate in the race. However, the Libertarian candidate is Brian Kuzma. Why should seven board members get to decide on textbooks for every district in Texas based solely on their personal preferences?
Technorati Tags: Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy, Teri Leo, textbook selection
You can teach creationism as long as it’s quality creationism
January 16th, 2008
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board said Tuesday that it will wait until April to decide whether the Institute for Creation Research can offer an online master’s degree in science education. The board was supposed to take up the issue next week.
In November, a team of educators and coordinating board officials visited the institute’s graduate school in Dallas and concluded that it offered a standard science education curriculum. In December, an advisory council recommended that the board approve the institute’s application.
So what does this mean? The team that visited the program said that is was “a standard science education curriculum.” So why is the board delaying? What has the board found out since then to suggest that it might not be teaching at a graduate level? If so, why didn’t the original advisory council indicate the problem before?
Maybe the board is hoping that the Institute will not be able to meet its “graduate level” standard. That way they can reject the application without rejecting creationism and avoid offending those who believe that creationism should be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution. I can just see it now, “oh no, we didn’t reject the program because of the content but because the content wasn’t at the graduate level!”
As we start to put evolution disclaimer stickers on our biology textbooks, we might want to consider some other stickers suggested by Colin Purrington as well.
Technorati Tags: Evolution, Creationism, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, Institute for Creation Research, Master’s Degree in Science Education
Because it will improve our economic base?
January 10th, 2008
Very interesting article on the probable upcoming debate on evolution in Texas science textbooks.
Some educators breathed a sign of relief, thinking that Texas science classes might be spared religious controversy. Yet buried in the TEKS existing standards is the reason that Texas could be the center of evolution’s next big battle: Section 3a reads: “The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.” (Italics added.)
Good thing the Institute for Creation Research may soon get to offer a Masters of Science Education in Texas. That way teachers will be prepared to “teach the controversy.”
Creation institute’s degree plan questioned
One panel stated that, despite its “embedded component” of creationist views, the degree plan “is nevertheless a plausible program.”
Will somebody please explain to me what Texas gains in terms of citizens prepared to work in the 21st century by teaching intelligent design? Will it provide a better trained workforce to develop and attract the high paying jobs we seem to want when we talk about economic development?
January 2nd is deadline to file for SBOE primaries
January 1st, 2008
Seven positions are up for election in 2008 for the Texas State Board of Education. This is the board that use to support the teaching of evolution
but for some reason, TEA no longer makes that statement. Three of the uncontested seats are Republican, one currently held by Terri Leo, a supporter of teaching “the weaknesses of evolution.”
Why can’t the Democrats manage to come up with one person in District 6 willing to run against Leo? Surely there is a professor at one of the area colleges or even a student that would be willing to at least submit his or her name for the ballot?
McLeroy accepting the standard for teaching evolution?
September 5th, 2007
Interviews with 11 of the 15 members of the board – including seven Republicans and four Democrats – found little support for requiring that intelligent design be taught in biology and other science classes. Only one board member said she was open to the idea of placing the theory into the curriculum standards.
“Creationism and intelligent design don’t belong in our science classes,” said Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, who described himself as a creationist. “Anything taught in science has to have consensus in the science community – and intelligent design does not.”
Mr. McLeroy, R-College Station, noted that the current curriculum requires that evolution be taught in high school biology classes, and he has no desire to change that standard.
What can I say, I don’t believe him for a moment. I don’t know what his plan is but given his public record, I believe that he would never miss an opportunity to promote “intelligent design” in the science classroom.
Technorati Tags: Don McLeroy, Texas SBOE, Texas, State Board of Education, evolution, intelligent design
McLeroy accepting the standard for teaching evolution?
September 5th, 2007
Originally posted at TexasEd
Interviews with 11 of the 15 members of the board – including seven Republicans and four Democrats – found little support for requiring that intelligent design be taught in biology and other science classes. Only one board member said she was open to the idea of placing the theory into the curriculum standards.
“Creationism and intelligent design don’t belong in our science classes,” said Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, who described himself as a creationist. “Anything taught in science has to have consensus in the science community – and intelligent design does not.”
Mr. McLeroy, R-College Station, noted that the current curriculum requires that evolution be taught in high school biology classes, and he has no desire to change that standard.
What can I say, I don’t believe him for a moment. I don’t know what his plan is but given his public record, I believe that he would never miss an opportunity to promote “intelligent design” in the science classroom.
Technorati Tags: Don McLeroy, Texas SBOE, Texas, State Board of Education,
evolution, intelligent design
Your Texas State Board of Education: Don McLeroy
October 2nd, 2006
District 9 of the Texas State Board of Education is represented by Don McLeroy of Bryan, Texas. Apparently, McLeroy doesn’t like to let little things like facts get in his way. Recently, he was one of the board members advocating changing Texas English , Reading, and Writing standards.
Texas Ed: Comments on Education from Texas:
“Texas standards are not grade-level specific, most of them are noise. They can’t be measured and are just a bunch of fuzzy words,” McLeroy said.
Fuzzy words like these for high school English:
Texas Ed: Comments on Education from Texas:
(B) demonstrate control over grammatical elements such as subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, verb forms, and parallelism;
Pretty fuzzy alright. Anyone can review the TEKS standards online at the TEA website. You can read more about the curriculum changes here:
All other states, beware! Texas is changing curriculum standards!
His seat is actually being contested by Maggie Charleton. And a lot of people seem to prefer her to McLeroy.
Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Opinion: Editorials:
First, Ms. Charleton. The Bryan Democrat is much less likely than her opponent, Republican incumbent Don McLeroy of Bryan, to use her position to insert politics into the review of textbooks. She says the board should review textbooks to see whether they meet the standards set by experts, not for a particular view of the world. That makes sense.Dr. McLeroy, a 60-year-old Bryan dentist, wants the state board weighing in more directly on textbooks. He’s been part of the group that wants broader review powers, even though the Legislature rightly stripped the board of much of this authority.
Dr. McLeroy, backed by religious conservatives, has been on the board since 1998. We believe it’s time to infuse the board with some new blood, and Ms. Charleton, with her 30 years of teaching experience, seems to have a lot to offer.
Corsicana Daily Sun, Corsicana, Texas – Charleton on a ‘listening tour’:
Charleton, a Democrat, is challenging incumbent Don McLeroy of Bryan. The seat is a swing position in a struggle for control of the board, she insists. Ideology is taking the upper hand on the board, overruling the needs of kids and parents.She points to the editing of text books to remove references to slavery in history, to remove information about breast self-exams and testicle self-exams from health books, and evolution from biology texts.
McLeroy is part of the group that includes Miller and Leo who are interested in regaining control of content of text books. His seat matters.
Retired teacher challenges SBOE incumbent in District 9:
The Texas Freedom Network, a non-partisan watchdog group that advocates a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties, calls the District 9 seat the “swing seat” that will determine whether moderates or “political and religious ultra-conservatives” control the 15-member board.
Retired teacher challenges SBOE incumbent in District 9:
In the past, conservative Republicans on the board have advocated limiting the way Texas public school curriculum deals with issues like evolution, civil rights, sexuality education and environmental issues. In response to ideological infighting on the SBOE, the Texas legislature 11 years ago removed the board’s power to determine textbook content as part of the textbook adoption process.Conservative Republicans now hold seven of the 15 seats on the state board.
Charleton says she would like to bring mainstream Texas values and common sense to the board’s deliberations.
Here’s part of a letter written to Miller concerning McLeroy’s actions.
But that still was not enough. Unwillingly to let the TEA textbook staff do their jobs, Dr. McLeroy thought it necessary to correspond with the biology textbook publishers themselves and act like a one-man Texas Education Agency. He reminded publishers on Jan. 8 that “there is a process by which errors that remain in the books will be fixed before they get into the hands of children,” and that their “cooperation in it is required.” This sort of ex parte communication is probably not legal, and is certainly very irregular and unwise. The only way to explain this is to conclude that Dr. McLeroy is bullying the publishers, an exercise of over-reaching that all pseudoscientists engage in and serves as one of its identifiers. After all the implied threats and coercion that textbook publishers have to endure under the normal Texas textbook adoption process to change their books’ content to satisfy the political, religious, and social desires of the State Board as a single entity, now they are having to endure individual Board members calling them up with the same implied threats and informing them their “cooperation” is “required” in yet another sleazy attempt to satisfy the Discovery Institute’s wishes. No wonder our country’s textbook publishers feel they are harassed by the Texas process. Believe me, they complain privately about this, and their complaints are fully justified.There exists even further evidence that these actions were part of a planned strategy to censor the evolution content of the biology books despite their overwhelming adoption by the SBOE without changes asked for by the Discovery Institute and other creationist organizations: while the public–including scientists and science educators, and probably most members of the State Board of Education–were kept ignorant of the details of the behind-the-scene maneuverings of Dr. McLeroy to intimidate publishers, the details were known to members of other creationist organizations. Mr. Frank Mayo, an officer of Texans for Better Science Education, was obviously aware of the push to damage the biology books under the guise of “error correction,” since he referred to this effort in his message to the Katy ISD Board as they considered which biology textbook to adopt.
There’s plenty more but since the letter was addressed to Miller, I suspect she didn’t see any reason to pursue any of it’s claims.
Visit McLeroy’s webpage for more information on his priorities and beliefs. He begins with the need for teaching “clear thinking” in Texas schools.
Clear Thinking about the Texas Public School System:
Thus, the most amazing “orthodoxy” which dominates the educational establishment “leviathan” today is the slighting of “facts and knowledge” for emphasis on problem-solving and critical thinking. Problem solving and critical thinking are secondary skills. Before one can think and solve he must first have something to think about.
I have to admit that I only skimmed the stuff. But jeez, he calls it “clear thinking” but it isn’t supposed to emphasis critical thinking skills. I suspect this falls into the realm of Leo’s tendencies to indoctrination rather than thinking. What can I say, I work in a profession that didn’t even exist when I was in graduate school and I coach Odyssey of the Mind. Facts accumulate and even change over time. We need to be able to figure out how to use them.
If you want facts against evolution or comprehensive sex education, McLeroy’s website is the place for it. Of course, I find it curious that he doesn’t present a whole lot of facts backing up his abstinence only approach to sex education.
As for his approach to evolution? I didn’t bother with it. People who want evolution out of the schools aren’t interested in science being able to explain and predict the world around us, they are interested in discrediting anything that contradicts their religious beliefs.
I do believe this gets us back to indoctrination again. Is education about the filling of the pail or the lighting of the fire? Oh, wait a minute. Did Yeats believe in evolution?
Your State Board of Education: Terri Leo
September 28th, 2006
Terri Leo represents district 6 for the State Board of Education. She is also the board member who recently attempted to expand the board’s power to review textbooks to include content to protect us from the liberal views of those New York text book publishers.
See, she’s only trying to protect the children of Texas from poorly written text books. In 2003, she provided an example of what she was talking about:
This shift in policy has resulted in many disastrous results. One book approved in Texas, for example, was the subject of national ridicule and condemned on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). Dubbed the “Texas rain-forest algebra book,” it received an “F” grade on a report card produced by Mathematically Correct, a group of independent math scholars who reviewed math books adopted in Texas. The book watered down algebra by including such things as chili recipes, ancient myths, a photograph of Maya Angelou and Bill Clinton (this was supposed to demonstrate parallelism in sentence structure), and asking students what roles zoos play in society. No algebra is even mentioned until page 100. The publisher states that the algebra book’s focus is to “get students to communicate their thinking about problem solving and to work on different approaches, rather than focusing on getting the right answers”. The book says the teacher’s role “is to be a facilitator who supports students. Questions should be posed to stimulate thought rather than get an answer.” Under the previous system, the SBOE was able to insist that publishers correct outrageous and offensive content. Without SBOE content standards, political agendas masquerading as science have been smuggled into classrooms. Books marred with inaccuracies, omissions and errors have been approved as well.
And we all know how many Texas districts rushed out to adopt the text book just because it was approved by the state board. Don’t we? Well, no we don’t. Now this could just be an oversight by Leo in failing to mention the actual number of children who’s algebra education suffered from the use of these text books. You know, somehow I doubt it.
The legislature took the power from the SBOE in the early 90’s after years of flagrant and nationally embarrassing decisions approving or disapproving text books based on the beliefs of a small percentage of the population. Essentially, the SBOE was denying local districts the opportunity to adopt text books simply because board members thought they books undermined Texas values rather than it’s actual factual content. As for who gets to define those values, well, the board naturally. Leo obviously feels the legislature made a mistake.
I can’t help but believe that she represents that small minority that the legislature was addressing. On her personal website, Leo states the following:
TERRI LEO – STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 6:
A strong conservative voice in the State Board of Education’s management of the multi-billion dollar Permanent School Fund will always be essential, and I have stood consistently for traditional, conservative values in this, as well.
What’s interesting is that in the previous paragraphs she doesn’t really address the conservative values that she refers to in “as well.” She does talk about her roles on the board and how the board affects text book decisions nation wide. When she presents her view on phonics-based instruction, she doesn’t appear to be suggesting that it is a conservative view.
While some would dismiss this as merely mincing words, I think it really does reflect her belief in having a strong conservative voice in all things regarding education. She has a conservative agenda and her mind is made up.
The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them–Round 4:
Terri Leo is the leader of the Texas Taliban faction on the State Board of Education; she even exercised her perogative as a Board Member to make a speech before the last public hearing of the Board in Austin to profess her commitment to creationist-inspired skepticism about Darwin’s theory of evolution (and this before hearing any testimony!).
Whatever you may think about the evolution debate, I think it is telling that she was providing her views before any testimony. So what is education to her? Apparently it doesn’t include teaching the thoughtful discussion and analysis of a situation before reaching a conclusion. Maybe it’s more about indoctrination? It certainly is not about local control and trusting local teachers and officials to make sound judgements regarding the education of their children.
Lowe, Leo win re-election to state education board:
Leo, a homemaker and former teacher in Garland and Dallas, voted as one of four board members against 11 others to reject some biology textbooks dealing with evolution.Leo, 44, said the books did not fully discuss and portray deficiencies in the scientific basis for evolutionary theories.
The majority voted to adopt the books because books can be rejected based only on factual errors or failure to follow mandated state curriculum.
NCSE Resource — Textbook power grab rebuffed in Texas:
A brief (PDF) from a number of groups, led by the Texas State Teachers Association and also including the Texas Freedom Network and the Texas Association of Biology Teachers, urged the attorney general to reaffirm DM-424, contending that Leo’s request “telegraphs a desire by some members of the SBOE to return to the day when textbook decisions were made on non-educational grounds,” when “the SBOE’s textbook adoption process was entangled with ideology, politics, and religion, and was a forum for divisive political battles that focused on ideological rather than educational or pedagogical concerns.”
Leo is not up for re-election this year. However, all Texans who believe that public education should be a place for informed and civic education rather than mere indoctrination would do well to keep an eye open for her next power play.
