Go San Angelo – 7/18/09
OUR OPINION: Education 'experts' slam César Chavez

The Texas Freedom Network, a group that monitors actions by the religious right on the SBOE, pointed out that two of the “experts” opposed to Chavez are unqualified to be on the panel and were appointed mainly because of their background as religious ideologues. David Barton, founder of the conservative Christian advocacy group WallBuilders, and Rev. Peter Marshall, an evangelical minister from Massachusetts who runs Peter Marshall Ministries, were appointed in March. As the Freedom Network notes, Barton earned a bachelor’s degree in religious education and Marshall has no graduate academic work in education.
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KBMT - 7/16/09
State Board of Education Wants to Strip Cesar Chavez from School Books

The Hispanic community is "up in arms" after hearing of recommendations that Cesar Chavez is one of the historical figures that should be de-emphasized or left out of Texas elementary textbooks....State Board of Education member David Bradley told KBMT 12 News there is simply too much material to fit into text books right now, and that they are working on ranking and keeping the most influential members in the books.
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Statesman 7/20/09
Van de Putte: As we debate curriculum, let's put students before politics

The board recently appointed a panel of experts to help revise the social studies curriculum. The panel includes two "experts" whose experience is not in the field of education or curriculum standards, but in partisan politics. These panelists have decided to use our children's social studies curriculum as a platform for their political agendas and have advocated against the inclusion of cultural studies and diversity in the curriculum.
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Dallas Morning News 7/18/09
State education board shouldn't rewrite history

Gail Lowe was appointed a week ago by Gov. Rick Perry to chair the State Board of Education after the state Senate refused to confirm her predecessor, Don McLeroy, as chairman. Lowe and McLeroy are both social conservatives and creationists who voted recently to approve new science standards that include creationist critiques in the state's textbooks – despite pleas from many scholars and business people not do so.
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Texas Freedom Network -7/30/09
SBOE-Appointed Social Studies ‘Experts’ Lack Credentials, Denounce Public Education, Support

The Texas State Board of Education is set to appoint a social studies curriculum “expert” panel that includes absurdly unqualified ideologues who are hostile to public education and argue that laws and public policies should be based on their narrow interpretations of the Bible.
TFN has obtained the names of "experts" appointed by far-right state board members. Those panelists will guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. They include David Barton of the fundamentalist, Texas-based group WallBuilders, whose degree is in religious education, not the social sciences, and the Rev. Peter Marshall of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, who suggests that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerance of homosexuality.
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NY Times Jan 21, 2009
In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.
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