True culture warriors never sleep

There’s no possible way that this can end well.

The [State Board of Education] will consider a resolution next week that would warn publishers not to push a pro-Islamic, anti-Christian viewpoint in world history textbooks.

Members of the board’s social conservative bloc asked for the resolution after an unsuccessful candidate for a board seat called on the panel to head off any bias against Christians in new social studies books. Some contend that “Middle Easterners” are increasingly buying into companies that publish textbooks.

A preliminary draft of the resolution states that “diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts” across the U.S. and that past social studies textbooks in Texas also have been “tainted” with pro-Islamic, anti-Christian views.

I don’t even know what to say. This is a train wreck wrapped in a freak show inside a clown car. In the name of sanity, go throw a few bucks at Rebecca Bell-Metereau and Judy Jennings. This crap needs to end. The Trib has more on that.

It must be noted, as Abby Rapoport does, that the SBOE actually has some serious business on the agenda as well.

Each year, the board determines what percentage of the $22-billion fund’s returns will get paid out. This time around, we’re expecting a state budget shortfall of $18 billion—or possibly higher. Every dollar the board sends out means a dollar the legislature doesn’t have to spend. That frees up general revenue funds in the rest of the state budget. The board had initially said it would give somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 percent. “I think the one and a half percent caught some folks’ attention,” Bradley who chairs the board’s financial committee, told me. Now, he says, the staff recommends the board send between 3 and 3.5 percent.

That’s as much as $1.2 billion over two years.

Then there’s another $1.1 billion that the board owes schools—”catch-up” money from last cycle, when the fund got too low to pay out.

There’s likely going to be a fight though. One of the chief purposes of the fund is to buy materials like textbooks. However, as part of its proposed budget cuts, the Texas Education Agency has offered to postpone buying English/Language Arts books that were expected to arrive in the fall of 2011. And you might remember the board already postponed asking for science textbook funding.

And for all you people who like pre-k: pre-k materials are part of this block of funding. So it’s not just grade school and high school kids who might have to go without. The board members will almost definitely argue with the agency and the commissioner about the proposed cuts.

That’s definitely worth watching. Hopefully, it will not get lost in the coverage of the craziness.

Related Posts:

• Day One at the SBOE
• SBOE wants its new textbooks
• Where’s the money for new textbooks coming from?