This fall, for the first time in 12 years, the Texas State Board of Education was due to review the Social Studies TEKS. In doing so, they attempted to answer the question: how should we teach U.S. History? Against the backdrop of outrage over CRT and a midterm election that will likely bring a more conservative board to power – what did the SBOE decide?
This fall, for the first time in 12 years, the Texas State Board of Education was due to review the Social Studies TEKS. In doing so, they attempted to answer the question: how should we teach U.S. History? Against the backdrop of outrage over CRT and a midterm election that will likely bring a more conservative board to power – what did the SBOE decide?
Teaching Texas is a new audio documentary from Wonder Media Network that uncovers the surprising history behind America’s latest culture war.
WMN on Twitter: @wmnmedia
Grace Lynch on Twitter: @gracelynch08
Teaching Texas
Chapter 7: Collision Course
Transcript
[TV turning on]
Rep. James Talarico
Would you be open to an amendment requiring that in civics classrooms we teach the history of racism and white supremacy, and that we teach our students that is morally wrong? Would you be open to something like that?
Rep. Steve Toth
We already all are teaching that. We should teach that. And throughout the document, it talks about the fact that slavery existed and that it was wrong and that it was evil.
[hearing continues softly underneath]
Zach Kent:
I spent, I can't tell you how many hours last year when the house was in session watching these late night debates into like, like on school nights, right? Staying up to like one or two in the morning, watching these live debates on the house floor…
[return to hearing audio]
Rep. James Talarico
And so would you be open to an amendment?
Rep. Steve Toth
No I’m not.
Rep. James Talarico
So you’re not open to an amendment condemning white supremacy in our civics classroom? This is a simple question, Mr. Toth. Are you open to an amendment condemning white supremacy in our civics classrooms?
Rep. Steve Toth
White supremacy … in what context would you like to discuss it?
Rep. James Talarico
I think it’s… Mr. Toth it’s troubling that you’re having to ask clarifying questions. It’s an easy yes.
GRACE:
That mind-boggling back and forth took place back in 2021 in the Texas state house legislative session. And Zach Kent, an exasperated eighth grade history teacher, watched it all go down.
Zach Kent:
Watching that floor debate, I just felt like nobody: (A) Really cares about the social studies education. That's not what this debate is about. (B) if anybody did get this in their mind, that what I or my colleagues was doing was against this law, I have no problem having that conversation with them and being like, what do you think this says, what do you think we're doing?
GRACE:
The legislature passed Senate Bill 3 – which forbids the teaching of Critical Race Theory and lessons on systemic racism in the state of Texas. In doing so, Texas joined a handful of states that formally outlawed the education bogeyman.
SB 3 stipulates that teachers cannot discuss a widely debated or currently controversial issue. Although, it leaves it very open ended as to what that might actually mean – throwing classrooms into chaos.
Chaos that came to a head this fall. Because this year, against the backdrop of outrage over CRT, a midterm election, parents upending school board meetings and a national debate on how we teach American History… The Texas State Board of Education was due to review the Social Studies TEKS. For the first time since 2010.
From Wonder Media Network, I’m Grace Lynch and this is Teaching Texas, episode 7.
This week: the national panic over critical race theory collides with the Texas State Board of Education.
SB 3 created immediate controversy. The elected officials crafting this legislation weren’t operating from a place of great understanding of social studies curriculum. So … there was a lot left open to interpretation.
In the fall of 2021, the Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Carroll ISD made headlines. Remember that’s Jenn Hough’s school district in Southlake. In response to the SB 3 legislation, the director advised that teachers provide “opposing perspectives” to the teaching of the Holocaust. A tape of that conversation was leaked to NBC News and drew national attention.
[NBC NEWS RECORDING:]
Make sure that if, if, if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing - [how do you oppose the Holocaust?]
GRACE:
The Texas State Legislature immediately back peddled. Of course their new law didn’t mean *that*. But..it remained unclear what exactly it did mean.
Understandably, teachers are worried. The national climate has grown incredibly hostile to educators. As we saw with Dr. Whitfield in Colleyville - Folks are getting pushed out of their jobs over accusations of promoting CRT.
The last time the social studies TEKS were reviewed was back in 2010 when Don McLeroy was on the board. In episode 4, we charted some of the more radical things he added to the TEKS. Like inserting Moses as having a profound influence on the founding documents…even when no scholarly evidence of that claim exists. All this means that the existing Social Studies TEKS can be hard to follow. So teachers like Zach are put in an incredibly difficult position.
Zach Kent:
The standards that we have right now are not great. For instance, there's a line that says it is illegal to teach that slavery and racism are anything other than aberrations from or betrayals of America's founding ideals. There's another line that says you must teach the founding ideals of America's found in Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Now you're saying that founding ideals are from these two documents, these two documents, codify slavery and white supremacy in different forms. And you want me to teach that they're founding ideals, but at the same time, those founding ideals are betrayals of those same founding ideals. Like it's, it just cannot be done.
GRACE:
Following Don’s time as chair, the board had gained a reputation for being pretty radical. Which, given my experience with Don…tracks. But the negative media attention clearly had a lasting effect. Don, along with many of the other far right conservatives were voted out or left on their own. In the last decade, the Board has tried to assume a more moderate tone and presence. The current chair, Kevin Ellis, is all about decorum and trying to keep the temperature down.
Which the board has managed to do relatively successfully. That is... until this year.
Edward McKinley is a politics reporter for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News. He’s spent this fall covering the SBOE. And he told me we should’ve seen this showdown coming from a mile away.
Edward McKinley:
If you've been paying attention to the politics around education, local school boards, CRTlast year in the legislature, um, youth sports and whether, whether trans people are allowed to play in them – it's just, it's obvious that there's been this bubbling tension, particularly from conservatives approaching these issues. So I think that if you, if you were paying enough attention to see that and to know that they were going to take up social studies, that it was obvious that a collision course was gonna be inevitable at some point.
GRACE:
Despite the contentious climate, the Board had a job to do. It set forth to develop new standards. This involved subject matter experts – educators, scholars and historians – volunteering hundreds of hours of their time to compile revised drafts of the social studies standards. Over the course of the last year, the Board went back and forth with the work groups. Eventually, drafts were made public.
To understand how these initial drafts looked, I caught up with Carisa Lopez, the senior political director at Texas Freedom Network. You’ve heard from her before on this show. Overall, she was pretty pleased.
Carisa Lopez:
The new drafts from those work groups were really good. These standards haven't been updated in like 12 years. There's a lot that's happened in those 12 years, both socially, culturally, and in history.
GRACE:
So these new standards started out in really good shape. And that’s typically what’s happened in years past. Remember, it’s members of the board who can – through majority vote – unilaterally change the standards. So some of the more controversial items in there aren’t added in by the experts and academics.
Carisa Lopez:
I know the last two times that the board has looked at social studies both in the streamlining, and when they did the rewrite right, they, they took out things like Moses, but it's always the board that wants to put those back in. It's always the board that politicizes this.
GRACE:
Carisa found these new drafts made some much-needed additions and corrections.
Carisa Lopez:
For example, like there were additions of LGBTQ history, right? Like, they started talking about Obergefell, which is a really important Supreme Court case. They did removed Moses, and they added in, uh, teaching about white supremacy, the black codes, the KKK.
GRACE:
There was one other big change to the standards. The work groups reorganized when students would learn which parts of history. Currently, students get a whole year of Texas history, in the 4th and 7th grades. But this revision would have fully integrated Texas history with U.S. history. The suggested changes would have also introduced history lessons as early as kindergarten, which would require significant retraining for elementary school teachers. That raised concerns for some educators. So, as Edward predicted. The restructure and updated content – didn’t sit well with everyone.
Edward McKinley:
When the first drafts came out and the Texas Freedom Network and the teachers unions and some of these other groups said, Hey, this looks pretty good to us. I mean, I think at that point it should have been pretty obvious. I if, if you've been paying attention to how anything else is going in politics, that the equivalent groups on the right were not gonna be happy with it, and that they weren't gonna settle for something that Texas Freedom Network and the teachers unions and who, whomever else were happy with.
GRACE:
Conservative groups in Texas began to spread awareness about the proposed standards. Groups like Moms for Liberty, and Texas Values, sent out emails urging their supporters to contact their sitting SBOE member. One email sent by Texas Values went line by line through the suggested TEKS, identifying the subject matter and page number where they found inappropriate additions.
Such as…
Sociology p. 113 added TEK 5(H) “define sex, gender, and sexual orientation and differentiate among their distinguishing characteristics”
GRACE
Another they took issue with…
Grade 8 TEK 12 (G) p. 89 compare the goals of Pride … and explain how individuals identified with and participated in multiple movements
GRACE:
This email reads like it was written by the Gablers themselves. It was grassroots mobilization at its finest. Conservative groups highlighting specific TEKS, and urging their followers to make their voices heard.
Their mobilizing efforts paid off. The members of the SBOE reported receiving hundreds of phone calls and emails from people concerned with the new TEKS.
So on August 30th of this year, The State Board of Education convened a special public hearing.
Chair Kevin Ellis:
[Gavels in the meeting] Members we’re going to come together, welcome everyone to the August 30, 2022 Texas State Board of Education meeting, looks like we have a full house, so again thank you to everyone for being here today.
GRACE:
Reporter Edward McKinley and Carisa Lopez from TFN were in the room.
Edward McKinley:
and you've got people driving in from all over Texas, and it became clear the extent to which the tail was wagging the dog a little bit.
Carisa:
They, you know, think that Christianity is not being taught. They think that the LGBTQ agenda is being pushed. And so a lot of them didn't have specific TEKS to point to.
[MONTAGE: Protestors at the SBOE meeting:]
I feel like this is dismantling our country’s values, downplaying and eliminating God, family, and patriotism.
When you’re comparing the goals and you’re describing the movement in particular and very specifically, you’re telling them how they advocate for gay rights.
Your priority is a social engineering of our children into global citizens.
The drafts use indigenous, the laws of America, and the state of Texas refer to this group of people as Indians, or American Indians. They were not a species that is indigenous to the soil of our republic, nor is anyone else, to the best of our current knowledge. It implies a primary claim upon the land on which we stand. So, what it does is it fosters animosity and division among the people.
When you pass these standards and they’re used in our Texas schools, are kids going through that education and then leaving capable of defending the rights and values of this state and our nation? Or do they become revolutionaries bent on destroying the foundations of their nation because they’ve been taught to hate each other, hate themselves, hate their nation.
CRT is already rampant and baked into our curriculum and we don’t want to be good little global citizens where our border is considered a military zone.
Chair Kevin Ellis:
You expressed a concern about our borders being militarization zones, what student expectations were you referring to?
Protestor:
I don’t understand the question. I don’t understand why we would consider the border a militarization zone akin to Berlin. I don’t understand that.
Chair Kevin Ellis:
That’s what I said, what student expectation are you referring to?
Protestor:
Uh, I don’t remember what grade, I don’t know I’ve read so many things and it’s so convoluted and hard to find this information, but that’s been repeated so many times is it not in there? Is it not in TEKS?
Chair Kevin Ellis:
(crosstalk) I have not found it.
GRACE:
That was the chairman, Kevin Ellis, asking for clarification from one of the testifiers. Her answer makes evident that she hasn’t looked at the TEKS herself. The tension in the room grew.
Marisa Pérez-Díaz:
I think this is just a perfect example of the point that I was going to make and then a question to follow, the chair just asked you a question, and if you knew about what you were testifying about, then you would have been able to point out what TEK you were referring to, whether or not it was in the standards and so…
Chair Kevin Ellis:
Okay, I’m gonna… Miss Pérez-Díaz can you hold on just a second……
GRACE:
Aside from the substance of the TEKS – the process of the review drew ire from the protestors.
[MONTAGE: Protestors at the SBOE meeting:]
We are opposed to the unwarranted overhaul of the K-12 TEKS social studies written by various unelected work groups, we implore you to reject the radical revamp of the K-12 social studies TEKS and get back to true American history.
From the work group that they were saying that they do not feel rushed, that there were thousands of hours that went into the whole process and I just have to say that we the parents do feel rushed and what they went through with the thousands of hours ain’t nothing compared with what we will see at the ground level.
Carisa Lopez:
They didn't like that unelected working group members were the ones making these decisions. Which to me seems ridiculous because a lot of the SBOE members they're not the experts here. The work groups are the ones who are actually the experts in this field, right? They should be the ones, uh, leading this process. Of course, the board's job is to make the final decision, but we should be leaning on these work group members cuz they're the ones that are in the classrooms.
GRACE:
Carisa raises a good point. Taking aim at the work groups for being ‘unelected’ really feels like twisting the narrative. The elected board has final say. The subject matter experts who make up the work groups actually have very little power in determining the final product.
The critiques didn’t end there. Some were straight conspiratorial. One protester implied that George Soros was behind the revisions to the TEKS. A conservative christian group went so far as to send an ominous letter to the Board. Carisa read it aloud for us.
Carisa Lopez:
This is from the conservative, Texas Pastors Council, quote: “These are just a few of the concerning recommendations made by unelected work group members of what should be in and what should be out. Jesus spoke this morning in Matthew 18:6: Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
GRACE:
The conservative Texas Freedom Caucus in the state legislature also sent a letter to the Board. It said they were watching the changes to the history TEKS closely and that they would, quote, “not hesitate to intervene during the next legislative session.”
The public outcry and political threats worked. The board caved to conservative critiques. Instead of voting on whether or not to implement the new standards, the board voted to postpone the adoption of the social studies TEKS until 2025. At which time, the board will need to appoint NEW work groups, which will have to create NEW drafts of the standards. Hundreds of hours of work over the course of the last year. All scrapped.
The Texas State Board of Education has been described to me, in countless interviews, as a political circus. The adoption of the 2010 Social Studies standards, helmed by Don McLeroy, was the marquee event that gave it that reputation. And yet, Don’s board passed their standards. The political pressures on the board and the advocates in the room didn’t stop the board from doing their job. They completed the process.
This time around, the intensity of the debate over how we want to teach students about American History, upended the board. It brought the system to a crashing halt. And turned the board back into a circus.
Carisa Lopez:
It's because they felt the pressure from these outside groups that they decided to delay in the first place, right? They should have continued and gone through this process. And I think the reality is that the groups and, and their supporters that came to attack these standards, do have an outsized, outsized influence in Republican primaries. I think that it's hard, it's hard to not come to a conclusion that that plays a part in this decision.
GRACE:
Carisa thinks the process was obstructed because the conservative activists who showed up to testify, represent voters that regularly turnout in Republican primaries. As we discussed in episode 3, the elected board is very beholden to the grassroots activists that pay attention to their work. It’s essentially the Gablers’ methods at work all over again.
Of course, the board didn’t just come out and say they’d caved to political activists. They said the reason they couldn’t proceed was because of the controversial choice to remove the solo year of Texas History and integrate it into other coursework. When they spoke publicly, to folks in the press like Edward, that’s the justification they gave. But he didn’t quite buy it.
Edward McKinley:
I don't think there's a world where they would've said, Hey, this is just too hot for us. We're not gonna touch it. Um, but I think it would be ridiculous to ascribe any other motivation to it. I mean, the stated reasoning, which I'm sure has some validity to it, was that the restructure, they hadn't settled on, Hey, what subjects are we gonna teach in which grades? And that they needed to go back to the drawing board on that.
Like, it, it's their job as a body to make decisions about public education policy in the state of Texas. And it was just time to make a decision. And instead of making a decision, they said, Well, we're not to – we are not going to because we need to study this issue more. Um, but it was something they studied all year.
GRACE:
This is where Senate Bill 3 – the anti-CRT legislation Texas passed last year – comes back into play. Instead of voting to adopt new, updated TEKS, the board decided to only amend the existing TEKS to comply with SB 3. You know, the legislation where it’s implied you have to teach “both sides” of the Holocaust.
If we’re trying to have more accurate, up-to-date and holistic information in our history classes…then this is a monumental step backwards.
Carisa is now focused on the fact that for the foreseeable future, Texas instructional materials will be wildly out of date.
Carisa Lopez:
We have TEKS now in classrooms that our teaching social studies in history from 12 years ago, right? And now we're still not gonna take them up for another three years. So by the time, by the time students and these get into classrooms, if we potentially go through another rewrite, you know, we're gonna look at 15, 16, 17 years before these have even be been looked at again. So it's really, really concerning.
GRACE:
And ultimately, it’s Texas students that will be impacted the most.
Carisa Lopez:
The testimony that came out was really appalling, right? It was appalling to see teachers and scholars and community members portrayed as anti-American and anti-Christian because they are trying to ensure students learn about the experiences of the diverse communities that help shape our nation and chose not to repeat political myths included in, in past standards. We just want to ensure that our students are learning the truth. That they are learning accurate history, that diverse communities are represented, that students see themselves reflected in these standards from African American students, Latino students, LGBTQ students, right? They all deserve to be reflected in these standards. We have to teach about our past. We have to teach the truth about our past so we can do better in the future and that's all we want. We're doing a huge disservice to all Texas students when we allowed the far right to hijack this process at the 11th hour, because that's what happened.
GRACE:
Let's look ahead to 2025. The year that the board will once again attempt to revise the social studies standards. The process will be the same – they'll have experts draft the new TEKS, and then the board will vote to approve them. But there will be one glaring difference: It is very likely that the 2025 State Board of Education is going to be much more conservative.
Three of the current conservative board members will not be returning. Two of them were primaried by opponents who ran further to the right. The third was a moderate Republican, redistricted out of his seat: Dr. Matt Robinson.
Carisa Lopez:
Matt Robinson has been a, a true moderate on, on the board and he's been the only Republican that will sometimes not vote as a block with the rest of them. he won't just vote with them for the sake of voting for them for his political career, right? And he has paid the price for that.
GRACE:
Dr. Robinson was elected to the state board of education in 2018. He’s a urologist, with a decade of experience on his local school board. He’s active in the Galveston County Republican Party. Edward told me Dr. Robinson identifies as a ‘Bush’ Republican. Which, for the Texas State Legislature, wasn’t enough.
Edward McKinley:
During redistricting last year, the Republican-controlled legislature decided to redraw the district: a) to be more conservative, so it's more of a safe Republican seat, b) to no longer include Matt Robinson's home in the district. And who steps up to replace him, but Julie Pickren, a former Alvin ISD board member, and she was on that board for about six years, I think. And then she lost her reelection after it became public knowledge that she had participated in the protest outside the Capitol on January 6th.
GRACE:
Julie Pickren’s politics are very far to the right. So far to the right in fact, that Dr. Robinson has taken the unusual step of crossing party lines and endorsing her Democratic challenger: Dr. Dan Hochman.
Dan Hochman:
My name is Dr. Dan Hochman. I’m a 25 year veteran educator, I’ve been in the classroom at every level: college, university, high school.
GRACE:
Dr. Hochman holds a PhD in Biomedical research, and two masters degrees. One in science education and another in environmental science. He’s running a spirited campaign against Julie, who he said, is deeply unqualified for the office.
Dan Hochman:
She has no experience whatsoever in public education. Her own children do not go to public school. They go to a Christian school that she sits on the board of. And she's never set foot in a classroom. She's a hairdresser. And no offense, I love my hairdresser, but hairdressers may not be the best education policy makers.
GRACE:
With so much political attention on education these days, this SBOE race has become pretty vicious.
Dan Hochman:
Her PAC, put forth a robo call that was a very negative campaign against me saying lies about against me. I had a, I got a lawyer and we sent a cease and desist order to the marketing firm because the robo call was saying things like, “if you knew Dr. Hoffman was sexualizing children, would you still vote for him? If you knew Dr. Hoffman's taught CRT, would you still vote for him?” Things like that were very, very bad.
GRACE:
Libelous robocalls are not the norm for State Board of Education races. These elections typically fly under the radar. But in today’s political climate, these races have become much more high profile.
Dr. Hochman’s campaign faces a real uphill battle. Remember, the district was gerrymandered to be even more favorable to Republicans. Some folks – and Dr. Hochman is certainly one of them – think that’s why the board postponed the decision over the social studies standards. So that an even more conservative board can call the shots.
Dan Hochman:
It was very clear that this was a pre-planned concerted effort by the Republicans on the board to push the social studies rewrite down the road so that they can have this election and have their extremists that are running on the far right walk onto the board, take over and rewrite history the way they want to rewrite history, um, and social studies. The whole thing was basically a big hoax. And not only is that a pathetic use of children as political pawns, but also the social studies standards in Texas are extremely outdated.
GRACE:
The board is gerrymandered so that there’s reliably 9 Republicans to 6 Democrats. Republicans only need a majority vote to pass changes to the TEKS. So they can’t lose more than two votes on the board if they want to be able to pass their agenda un-checked. The Republican led legislature clearly didn’t feel like their existing voting block was strong enough. That’s why Dr. Robinson was gerrymandered out.
Adding new far right board members could re-create the dynamics that enabled Don McLeroy to wreak havoc on the social studies standards in 2010.
And there’s another reason why state Republicans might be vying for a stronger conservative block on the SBOE.
Dan Hochman:
So one of the, one of the formerly not that important a role for the state board is to approve or disapprove of charter applications that generally took a backseat to their main function, which is, you know, writing curriculum. But all of a sudden that's front and center.
GRACE:
Charter Schools.
We nearlyyyy made it through this whole series without discussing Charter Schools. We were so close! We worked so hard! And yet. The issue has become too large to ignore.
Carisa Lopez:
I think the larger picture and the strategy is to undermine trust in public schools. So that way we turn toward more towards, you know, religious, conservative, Christian, religious schools.
That’s Carisa Lopez again, back from when I first interviewed her in June.
All the people we’ve covered who are attacking public education – whether by raising concerns of CRT, or arguing that schools are pushing a leftist agenda – tend to point to the same solution: Charter schools. This dynamic is something Edward’s been covering closely.
Edward McKinley:
Broadly, this, this idea of, of the public schools have become indoctrinated with these leftist ideas. And I don't want my kids going there because I don't want them to be brainwashed by these progressive values that I, that I don't believe in. I, there are many people in Texas who have that viewpoint, and the efforts to remove those ideals from the content of public schools is an expression of that viewpoint. But the efforts to expand charter schools in Texas, to some degree, not to a hundred percent degree, but to some degree are also an expression of that viewpoint.
GRACE:
Charters, for decades, have experienced considerable support on the right. There’s some support on the left too – but in Texas, at least, expanding Charter schools is a priority for Republicans.
The State Board of Education is the only elected body that serves as any check on Charter School expansion in Texas. The board has final veto power over any charter application. Once an application is accepted, however, it has unlimited options for expansion. But applicants have to get approved by the Board first.
The thing is, the charter schools can also exert their power on the State Board -- just like activist groups. During this year's republican primary, the two board members who lost – Sue Melton Malone and Jay Johnson -- were the ones who repeatedly voted against the application for a very specific charter: Heritage Classical Academy.
Edward McKinley:
So this, these heritage charter schools they're backed by Hillsdale College in Michigan, which is this famous bastion of conservative thought., It's had a great deal of involvement with the Republican party going back a number of years. There's been a lot of controversies associated with it. But they put out this, this curriculum, that describes American history in terms of, uh, coziness with, with Christianity, um, and the inner relation of, of Christian ideology with the ideals of the, of the founders, framing everything as American exceptionalism.
GRACE:
For some additional context, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and person of interest in the January 6th insurrection, is a former vice president at Hillsdale College.
The SBOE has now voted twice to reject the Heritage Classical Academy charter School application. Over concerns of racist curriculum and insufficient credentials of their staff. Following the second rejection, Pro-Charter PACs flooded the SBOE primary with cash. Edward’s reporting showed that the PACs donated over $100,000 to Sue Melton Malone and Jay Johnson’s opponents. For obscure local elections, that is a lot of cash.
While the construct of Charters is fraught in general, many are doing really good work serving their students. Not all charter schools have an ideological bent. In our last episode, Meenal from the Round Rock Black Parents Association talked about how she sent her kids to a charter school because she found it was a more inclusive space.
But the values espoused by Heritage Classical Academy are explicitly Christian Nationalist. Which, as we’ve explored, is at the foundation of the push against any infusion of diversity into curriculums. Edward describes it as all things anti-woke.
Edward McKinley:
So often it just feels like a lot of this is defined by what it isn't, which is woke, which is inclusive, which is progressive, which is diverse. And, and these are the things that so much of the conservative conversations around this just seem to not want to be, and to don't force me to be those things. And so I think that some charter schools, not all, but a certain subset of conservative certainly also saw this as an opportunity to create a shadow education system or a sub education system separate from the traditional public school system where they would have much more of a say over by what values their kids are taught.
GRACE:
The number of kids in Texas charter schools has roughly doubled in the last ten years. Still, that growing number only represents about 7 percent of students statewide. The creation of a rival, “shadow education system” as Edward described it, is still a ways off. But securing a far right conservative majority on the Board certainly helps bring that reality closer. And Christian Nationalist charters aren’t only seeking to expand in Texas. The implications of a shadow education system are very serious for the entire country.
When I first spoke to Carisa, she said something that I’ve heard echoed in other conversations for this show.
Carisa Lopez:
If you wanna influence what the next generation thinks, politically you start in public schools.
GRACE:
If you’re listening to this on its wide release date, then you know today, November 8th, is the day of the midterm elections.
Across the country, from school boards to the Governor’s Mansion to the U.S. Senate, Republican candidates are running on platforms that fundamentally question our Democracy. The most obvious way they’re doing this is by literally challenging the results of the 2020 election. But the more insidious way is through their attempts to restrict – and censor – public education. Because participating in a democracy requires a fully informed citizenry.
After these midterms, the Texas State Board of Education will likely be more conservative. Which means they will approach new social studies standards through a less inclusive lens. Standards that will be reflected in the nation’s textbooks. A more conservative board will also likely approve the rapid expansion of many new Charter schools. And with those two moves, the Republican, Christian Nationalist wing in Texas will have the power to approach education from the same perspective as the Gablers: figure out what you want kids to believe, and then write the history to reflect that.
It’s a practice that Americans have long been undertaking. So long, that for parts of our history, it can be hard to distinguish historical fact from fiction. For instance, the story of Texas’ own origin – a story that many white Texas have staked their identity on for more than a hundred years – may not be all that true.
Jason Stanford:
The idea of Texas, the story we tell about Texas, it's not based on historical record it's a story that is, that is impervious to fact. Challenging the myth brands you as disloyal. And that the way to be Texan under the, under the traditional sense is to believe in a story that can't be proven by facts and is often disproven by facts.
GRACE:
Next week, in our Teaching Texas finale: the Texas origin myth.
Teaching Texas is created by me, Grace Lynch. It’s produced by myself, and Adesuwa Agbonile. Our editor is Lindsey Kratochwill. Production Assistance by Sara Schleede. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer. Original theme music by Chelsea Daniel.