This ought to be interesting.
Two civil rights organizations are seeking a federal review of public school education in Texas, accusing state school administrators of violating federal civil rights laws after curriculum changes approved earlier this year by the Texas Board of Education.
The request to the U.S. Department of Education made by the Texas NAACP and Texas League of United Latin American Citizens on Monday contended that the curriculum changes passed in May “were made with the intention to discriminate” and would have a “stigmatizing impact” on African-American and Latino students.
“The State of Texas is failing to provide many of its minority students with equal educational opportunities,” documents sent to the federal department said.
The request, signed by Gary Bledsoe, president of the state NAACP, and Joey D. Cardenas Jr., state director of Texas LULAC, asked that implementation of the curriculum changes and new standardized tests be stopped for being racially or ethnically offensive or historically inaccurate.
Besides the curriculum complaint, they accused the state, the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Board of Education of “miseducation” of minority students, disparate discipline for minority students, using accountability standards to impose sanctions on schools with high numbers of minority students and rules leading to underrepresentation of minorities in gifted and talented school programs.
That was an AP story; here’s the Chron version. Here’s a press release and a talking points document. This is not a lawsuit, but could possibly turn into one. I wish I could show you the documents they presented, but neither the Texas NAACP nor the Texas LULAC websites had anything relevant. I have no idea what if anything may come of this, but I look forward to seeing whatever does happen. The DMN has more.
This is one of the stupidest complaints I’ve seen in a while. The complainants would better serve their communities by working to keep kids in school, and pushing for more tutoring in basic language and math skills.
Whoever wrote the talking points document could use an editor with a good grasp of basic written English.
The talking points document for the complaint could have used a bit more proof reading, but it doesn’t mean that the points it makes are not important. I would not call it stupid.
If the school curriculum is degrading to you personally as a member of a minority, it would probably affect school attendance and performance. Changing the curriculum to accurately reflect history and recognize all the important figures, not just Anglo, would probably help keep kids motivated.
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