Texas' New Public School Textbooks Promote Climate Change Denial and Downplay Segregation

The battle over Texas textbooks is raging once again. On Tuesday, hundreds of citizens turned out for the first public hearing on the controversial social-science materials now under review as part of the state's contentious once-in-a-decade textbook adoption process. During the all-day proceedings, activists and historians pointed out numerous factual errors and complained that the books promoted tea party ideology while mocking affirmative action and downplaying the science linking human activity to climate change. "They are full of biases that are either outside the established mainstream scholarship, or just plain wrong," Jacqueline Jones, who chairs the history department at the University of Texas-Austin, said from the podium. "It can lead to a great deal of confusion in the reader."

60 Years Ago Today, The Supreme Court Told Schools to Desegregate. Here's How Fast We're Backsliding.

Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The changes required by Brown v. Board of Education decision were not immediate, but they were profound and lasting. Today, schools in the South are the least segregated for black students in the nation.

Of course, that doesn’t tell the whole story. In honor of the Brown anniversary, UCLA’s Civil Rights Project released a report that analyzes the progress of desegregation since 1954. According to the report, starting in the 1980s, schools began to ditch integration efforts and shift focus to universal education standards as a way to level the playing field for students in unequal schools. In 1991, when the Supreme Court ruled that school districts could end their desegregation plans, it put the nail in integration's coffin.

How a ‘New Secessionist’ Movement Is Threatening to Worsen School Segregation and Widen Inequalities

A new secessionist movement, anchored in the South, provides yet another reminder that “separate” still means “unequal” when it comes to the racial dynamics of the nation’s public schools.

The small middle-class town of Gardendale, Alabama, outside Birmingham, voted on November 12 to secede from the Jefferson County school district and then to raise taxes on themselves to finance the solo venture. Then, in March, Gardendale’s 14,000 residents finally got their own Board of Education. Soon after his appointment, one new board member, Clayton “Dick” Lee III, a banker and father of two, said he aspires to build a “best in class” school system “which exceeds the capabilities of the system which we are exiting.”

School Segregation Across The Country Proves Students Are Still Separate

While many of the major gains in the South since the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education have been reversed in recent years, a new report says that, at the very least, things are not as bad as they were before the court ruled to desegregate U.S. schools.

“Contrary to many claims, the South has not gone back to the level of segregation before Brown. It has lost all of the additional progress made after l967 but is still the least segregated region for black students,” says the report, released Thursday by researchers at UCLA’s Civil Rights Project.

Schools Guilty Of Gender Stereotyping, IOP Research Claims

Nearly half of state schools in England are guilty of contributing towards gender stereotyping, with few bothering to tackle the gender bias of subjects such as maths and physics, researchers have claimed.

Out of the country co-ed secondary schools, 49% are strengthening the gender divide, with just 19% actively bridging the gap by explaining the universal appeal of typically "boy" or "girl" subjects, an Institute of Physics (IOP) study found.

How the Koch Brothers Funded Public School Segregation

At first glance, the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers and the Wake County (NC) school board couldn't be more disparate. Charles and David Koch, the brains behind the massive Koch Industries conglomerate and the funders of so many right-wing political causes, are national figures, credited with (or accused of, depending on your political persuasion) launching the tea party movement and waging war on the Obama administration and its agenda. The Wake County public school board is, well, just that.

In reality, there are deep connections between the Kochs and Wake County, and it's all about the money. The latest installment in the left-leaning Brave New Foundation's "Koch Brothers Exposed" video series reveals how a Koch-founded and -funded outfit, Americans for Prosperity, fueled a campaign to "re-segregate" the schools of Wake County, a prosperous area in North Carolina that's home to the cities of Raleigh and Wake Forest, among others.