TX SBOE not interested in hearing from experts, teachers

Meeting as the Committee of the Full Board Thursday night, November 19, the Texas State Board of Education made it clear that they are not interested in hearing any further from their “experts” or the writing teams of social studies specialists in their revision of social studies standards for the state of Texas. (Click here — or on the chimp — for the 40+ minute audio, or right-click to download and save — it’s a 5 Megabyte file, so it might take a while to load or download.)

Members Hardy, Craig, and Knight wanted to invite input from these specialists, but McLeroy, Leo, Cargill, Dunbar, and Mercer did not. One other member joined the vote to invite input (I’m guessing Berlanga or Nunez, but they were silent). The opposition comments are reported on the TFN Blog.

Mavis Knight pointed out that there would be a public comment period and a hearing in January-February, and that it would be helpful for the experts to be able to help the Board make proper use of that. It was clear, though, that Dunbar, McLeroy, et al. have already made up their minds what they will do, and have no intention of taking other input into consideration.

It seems that there is a majority that’s open to reconsidering particular names of historical persons for inclusion (or not) on the list of people who will be mentioned, or the list who could be mentioned in the history books, but otherwise they will make further changes on their own, listening only to favored sources that they’re already listening to, and they’re not interested in or open to anything else.