Get Involved

Have your say at SBOE meetings

The Texas State Board of Education meets six times per year. Please see below for information on how you can help make sure that Texas students get the 21st Century science education they deserve.

Please speak up and be heard. Texas students deserve a truly 21st century education in science. The anti-evolutionists on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) are only one vote shy of holding science back. Speaking up helps others do the same. Your voice could be the final straw that keeps the remainder of the board—and a majority—in favor of a strong science education.

What's Wrong with the 2009 Amendments?

A number of amendments to the science TEKS were passed at the January and March, 2009, SBOE meetings. The National Center Science Education (NCSE) has posted a brief analysis of these amendments, and why they are problematic for science education in Texas.

There are many options for speaking up available to you. You can contact your SBOE or legislative representatives, you can write letters-to-the-editor to local newspapers, and you can join organizations that work to defend science education. The following pages will help you speak up, tell you more about the Texas standards process, and let you know the positions of the SBOE members on science education:

How to Get Involved

>What You Can Do to Help

>How Texas Decides What Teachers Teach

>SBOE Members and Their Positions on Science Education

>SBOE Member Seats up for election in 2010

Reporters: How to Avoid a Trap

Reporters admirably try to avoid taking sides in political battles, but they often fall into a trap set by anti-evolutionists. Reporters can help by avoiding this trap and reporting fairly. It's simple:

Say alleged weaknesses, not “weaknesses”

There are two sides to the political conflict. One side says that evolution suffers "weaknesses," and the other side says that it does not, that evolution is strongly confirmed science. But reporters frequently say this: ”One side wants the weaknesses taught and the other side doesn't.” This is one-sided reporting, as it tells people that there are weaknesses that could be taught. Reporters should instead say, “One side alleges weaknesses with evolution and wants them taught, while the other side says the alleged weaknesses do not survive scientific scrutiny and are false.”

If you don't live in Texas…

The What You Can Do to Help page is mainly for those who live in Texas. Representatives don't take well to being contacted by people from out of state. Even though the Texas science standards get exported to other states via textbooks, representatives tend to view Texas standards as only the concern of Texans. Still, there are a number of things non-Texans can do to help:

Encourage local media to cover what's going on in Texas.
Engage in science advocacy in your state.
Join or donate to science advocacy organizations, whether in your state, in Texas (e.g. TFN), or nationally (e.g. NCSE).

If these methods don't help with the immediate situation in Texas, they may help keep the problem from spreading outside Texas. They may also help by spreading awareness into Texas from the outside. It's even possible that Texas would respond to embarrassing exposure from her sisters in the Union.