Mercer debate claims don't pass the smell test

State Board of Education District 5 incumbent Ken Mercer is running for re-election. In the Republican Primary debate held last week Mr. Mercer repeatedly claimed that students are not allowed to raise their hands and ask questions in science class. His opponent Mr. Tuggey suggested that, if that’s really happening then it’s a local issue which should be handled by the administration in that district, not micro-managed by the heavy hand of the SBOE. That’s a great way to look at the purported problem, but what Mr. Tuggey failed to note is that many of Mr. Mercer’s claims are ginned up to provide red meat to his most rabid supporters and I’m betting this one is too.

Ken Mercer also claimed that while the curriculum writing teams are required by law to involve participation of teachers, parents and business people; only teachers were involved. For this to be true none of the 102 team members must have any children, I find that highly improbable.

Mr. Mercer claims that conservative historians in classrooms were shut out of the process. Given that Republicans hold a 2 to 1 advantage on the board and appointed 67 of the 102 team members that is an absurd assertion. Can he seriously believe that not a single conservative was named to the teams with kind of majority? But wait, if he’s so concerned about the lack of conservatives, parents and business people why didn’t he bother to nominate even a single person to the teams?

Ideology over education in Texas

Rev. Peter Marshall, in his appointed role as a Social Studies curriculum expert, shows he’s no history scholar in the review he wrote of the recommendations of the curriculum writing teams. This unqualified out of state preacher was appointed by State Board of Education members Cynthia Dunbar and Barbara Cargill.

In Marshall’s analysis of the high school U.S. history class, he writes that the United States returned to Mexico “over half of the territory it conquered” during the Mexican-American War, “drawing the border only where we had claimed it to be before the war – the Rio Grande River.” He’s absolutely wrong. Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory to the U.S. including what are now the states, California, Nevada, Utah and most of Arizona as well as parts of other bordering states.

Dunbar and Cargill appointed the incredibly unqualified Rev. Marshall apparently because he endorses their social conservative agenda. Rev. Marshall runs Peter Marshall Ministries and his website promotes books for school age children. The man is an amateur historian at best and takes similar liberties with the facts in the books he writes and sells on the website.

Educating our children is one of the most important tasks of government, allowing unqualified ideologues to interfere with the quality of that education is unacceptable. I urge the teachers who have volunteered to develop the curriculum that will guide our children’s education for the next decade to file Rev. Marshall’s critique in the circular file where it belongs.