Post-mortem on Texas science supplements hearings

Just a couple more retrospectives on the latest Texas State Board of Education hearings, which ended with the most decisive win for teaching evolution seen for Texas K-12 in quite some time.

Thoughts from Kansas details how a single creationist in a review panel gave a list of “errors” to one publisher, Holt McDougal, that weren’t (mentioned before). Josh also talks about the importance of personal connections:

The really fun and effective parts of these hearings are the parts I can't talk about, the behind the scenes negotiations, the quiet conversations, the preparatory outreach and research that makes it possible for friendly board members to ask the right questions at the right time, to resist bad deals and to forge good ones.

A Dallas Observer blog, Edumication News, also has details on the creationist “errors” here.

But when it came to a biology panel making its recommendations, an evolutionary skeptic named Dr. David Shormann – who happens to run a Christian math and science education software company and authored the book “The Exchange of Truth: Liberating the World From the Lie of Evolution” – appears to have had a lot of input.

The Dallas Observer has another article bemoaning the lack of transparency.

Normally the board would be undergoing a lengthy public process to adopt new textbooks, but the state blew all that book money on tasers for Rick Perry’s security detail. You could have seen some of the proposed supplemental materials if you'd bothered to file a public records request. You did that, right? No? So much for “let there be light.”

Additional: Supportive editorials from the Corpus Christi Caller Times, Beaumont Enterprise, and Austin American-Statesman, and San Antonio Express-News.