The Republican Party of Texas has now posted its State Party Platform for 2008.
I have also excerpted and posted here the four pages of that platform with the Preamble, Principles, and positions on Education.
As usual the Texas GOP takes interesting positions on many things, but in this post I’ll just quote their statement on “theories [...]
Category Archives: Education Law & Policy
TX GOP 2008 platform on Education
June 22, 2008 – 11:51 am
Tom Chapin: “IT’S NOT ON THE TEST”
April 18, 2008 – 10:56 pm
Extra (Oct. 21, 2008): Breaking news on NCLB & assessment under President Obama
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You can play this video here, but be sure to visit Tom Chapin’s site for “It’s not on the test.”
Includes Lyrics, Statement, Fact Sheet, Press Info, Advocacy …
Florida legislation (pending) on Teaching Evolution
April 13, 2008 – 4:41 pm
Note that the interpretation by the staff analysts for the Florida House itself is dramatically more ominous than even the critical interpretation on The Panda’s Thumb.
Creationists’ new legistlative maneuvering: state “Academic Freedom” acts
April 6, 2008 – 4:25 pm
The latest wave of anti-bioscience activity in the legislative arenas in several states is the Introduction of “Academic Freedom” bills, such as the one introduced in Louisiana recently (and discussed by Casey Luskin at the Discovery Institute’s Evolution News and Views blog (with the illustration posted here at right).
The “Louisiana Academic Freedom Act” declares its [...]
Negative Implications Of No Child Left Behind: As Graduation Rates Go Down, School Ratings Go Up
February 18, 2008 – 8:10 pm
ScienceDaily (2008-02-16) — Texas’ public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, directly contributes to lower graduation rates, according to new research. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation — a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language students.
The study [...]
Creationist degree for science teachers: Trouble for Texas under NCLB?
January 12, 2008 – 9:43 pm
Would Texas state approval of the creationists’ masters degree program in “Science Education” jeopardize its satisfaction of the NCLB requirement for a “Highly Qualified Teacher” in every classroom, and its reciprocity arrangements for teacher qualification in other states?
House NCLB chair Miller endorses Obama
January 10, 2008 – 9:32 pm
As reported in the San Jose Mercury News,
Veteran legislator Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez [CA], has endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president.
Not mentioned in most of the commentary is that Miller chairs the House committee with jurisdiction over reauthorization of NCLB.
Cato: CHOICE would prevent curriculum conflicts
January 24, 2007 – 2:10 pm
The Cato Institute has release a report titled Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict by Neal McClusky, which makes the case for school choice as a preventive solution for avoiding conflict over public school curriculum.
Kansas science - evolution standards months away
November 22, 2006 – 3:00 pm
Kansas board members and scientists who want to rewrite the standards also want to take at least several months to do it. They hope to reconvene a panel of educators whose evolution-friendly work fell by the wayside last year when the board’s conservative majority decided to adopt language suggested by intelligent design supporters.
Shermer & Wells @ Cato (video online)
November 22, 2006 – 11:48 am
Update: This event will be on BookTV three times this (Thanksgiving) weekend:
On Thursday, November 23 at 5:30 pm and Friday, November 24 at 6:15 am and Sunday, November 26 at 3:00 am …
Michael Shermer spoke on themes of his book Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design, followed by Jonathan Wells, author of the “Promiscuously Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.” MP3 Podcast and RealMedia video recordings of the event are linked from the Cato site.
Teachers surveyed on NCLB
November 11, 2006 – 12:44 pm
As we gear up for the reauthorization of NCLB, there may be some interest in surveys of teachers on what they have seen and experienced since passage of the law. Here are a few.
an Idea for Constitution Day
November 10, 2006 – 9:16 am
For Constitution Day, it occurs to me that one way to satisfy the Congressional mandate would be to devote the period to exploring where, in the Constitution, Congress gets the power to impose this mandate on the local schools.
NCLB & the New Congress
November 9, 2006 – 8:00 pm
Reauthorization of NCLB is a top item on the agenda for the U.S. Congress that will convene in January 2007. The November 2006 elections has set the table for what might happen this time around, and it is time for people committed to quality education to begin planning for effective advocacy.
correction for Poynter “White Paper”
October 26, 2006 – 6:29 pm
The White Paper refers to the “Santorum Amendment” to NCLB, which was cut from the legislation before NCLB was passed by Congress and signed into law. Despite representations by ID advocates NCLB actually does not mandate or “encourage” “teaching the controversy,” this is not part of the law.
Distinctive value of the Poynter paper on Intelligent Design
October 24, 2006 – 10:48 am
The Poynter Center’s White Paper makes a number of other arguments that are being made by others, but I think this framing of the conflict over Intelligent Design in terms of civic education is the special and unique contribution from this paper.
ID Creationism in schools - the “Rawlsian” argument
October 19, 2006 – 10:40 pm
Reuland is correct to say that these people are not liberals, and can’t be heard to use Rawls’ theory as their own; but what they’re trying to argue is that liberals don’t have any possible position from which to justify not teaching ID, since they undermine their own principles, and the logical basis for any liberal argument, if ID is not included.
TX GOP to ban use of Economics Standards?
October 16, 2006 – 7:26 am
The 2006 Platform of the Texas State Republican Party declares that “We support the objective teaching and equal treatment of scientific strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories, including Intelligent Design. We believe theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught as scientific theory not scientific law; that social studies and other curriculum should not be based on any one theory.”
