The State Board of Education— the fifteen-member elected body that decides the curriculum standards known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS—has been no stranger to controversy in recent years. The board revises the existing standards within each subject once a decade, changing slightly (or not so slightly) the requirements for what must be covered in a “conforming” textbook. Fierce ideological debates over abstinence education and evolution have brought the board a predictable amount of statewide infamy over the years, but nothing has yet compared with the circus surrounding the board’s current effort to revise the social studies curriculum. Since last fall, protesters from the left and the right, along with the national media, have descended on Austin to decry the board’s politicization…
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