The Texas Education Agency [TEA] has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Chris Comer, who lost her job as the TEA’s top science education specialist after forwarding an email announcement of a talk by Barbara Forrest. ‘a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University, a co-author of “Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse” and [...]
Category Archives: Law & Policy
La’s Bio-major Gov. signs anti-Biology law
June 27, 2008 – 5:08 pm
Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal, who was himself a Biology student at Brown University, apparently doesn’t care if Louisiana students “don’t know much about Biology” when they graduate from high school.
As reported in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jindal has signed into law the “Louisiana Science Education Act,” that “will allow local school boards to approve supplemental [...]
Texas ELAR standards debacle (evolution next?)
May 24, 2008 – 11:39 pm
The Texas State Board of Education’s shocking action Friday (May 23, 2008) in adopting new standards for K-12 English/Language Arts is being viewed by some as a harbinger of things to come for the new science standards, which are the next to be revised.
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 …
Kansas science standards vote Feb 13, 2007
February 7, 2007 – 9:16 am
UPDATE Wednesday Feb 14, 2007: for the action taken by KSBE, see
http://curricublog.org/2007/02/14/kansas-science-decided/
UPDATE Sunday Feb 11, 2007: See this article in today’s LJWorld.com for background on the vote that is expected Tuesday.
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According to their agenda, the Kansas State Board of Education is scheduled to “Act on Kansas Science Education Standards” at 4:00 Tuesday afternoon on Feb. [...]
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.
Florida law: history is fact–not constructed
September 24, 2006 – 11:23 am
After this bill was passed by the Florida legislature and was waiting for Jeb Bush’s signature, I posted these pages from the omnibus 2006 Florida Education Law [pdf file] to a couple of email lists that I am on.
I have recently received requests from a couple people who want to make this available to their [...]
wikis and/as textbooks
September 12, 2006 – 2:35 pm
An article in Teachers College Press reports on the lack of adequate textbooks in California’s public schools — especially in financially less well-off communities. The authors have been sharply critical of high-stakes consequences being imposed by NCLB on students in schools without the resources needed for an education that measures up to the state’s standards.
Meanwhile, [...]
evolution=atheism=religion=unconstitutional?
August 31, 2006 – 4:24 pm
Ed Brayton on Dispatches from the Culture Wars has done a great job critiquing both the legal reasoning and the general logic and use of quotations and authorities deployed in an argument that teaching about evolution in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment.
Ed’s critique meticulously picks apart particular flaws in the logic [...]
Waxman letter on SMART Grants for Evolutionary Biology majors
August 27, 2006 – 11:24 am
Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Cal) has written to U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings demanding explanation and corrective action for the omission of Evolutionary Biology from a list of college majors eligible for need-based financial assistance, as discussed on this blog here and here and here, and on The Panda’s Thumb here and here.
Congressman Waxman’s letter is [...]
“Traipsing” authors on BookTV Aug 26-27
August 26, 2006 – 3:42 pm
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UPDATE: The BookTV page linked below now has a link for a video of this program that you can watch on your computer if you have RealPlayer installed. The URI for the video is http://www.booktv.org/ram/feature/0806/btv082606_4b.ram .
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Casey Luskin and John G. West, two of the authors of Traipsing into Evolution, will be on CSpan-2’s BookTV this weekend in [...]
Update: Evolutionary Biology to be restored to list
August 25, 2006 – 11:28 am
Today (8/25/06) a follow-up story in the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that, according to the Department, the omission was inadvertent and will be corrected.
In this story Barmak Nassirian, the registrars’ association official who called attention to the missing major, is quoted saying, “I’m happy they’ve restored evolutionary biology””
‘But he also said the incident points to the [...]
Let’s get Congressman Castle on the case
August 24, 2006 – 4:49 pm
On a long list of undergraduate majors that qualify low-income students for SMART grants, a white gap has taken the place of Evolutionary Biology on the list. If Evolutionary Biology is not included, that means students majoring in that field would not be eligible for funding under the program.
The deletion of this undergraduate college major [...]
