Texas History Education Standards Receive Dismal Reviews In Recent Report
A recent report says Texas K-12 standards in history are inadequate, ineffective and "fail to meet the state's college readiness standards," and the report's authors are pointing the finger at Gov. Rick Perry's State Board of Education.
In the report, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Social Studies Faculty Collaborative say that Texas' K-12 system is "founded upon an inadequate set of standards." Keith Erekson, the author and history professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, analyzes in the report the entire process of Texas' history standards -- from board approval to the curriculum itself.
The report notes that the Fordham Institute gave the state's history standards a grade of "D," calling it a "politicized distortion of history," that is "both unwieldy and troubling" while "offering misrepresentations at every turn."
These misrepresentations, Erekson writes, include excluding Native Americans from the standards curriculum until recently and citing states' rights as a cause of the Civil War when Texas did not cite it in their historical "Declaration of Causes."...
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