Instead, the board largely has become a national embarrassment that serves to promote stereotypes of Texas as a backward state more focused on basic skills than technology and advanced sciences — a state preoccupied with pushing a cultural agenda with requirements that schools teach the biblical theory of creation (or intelligent design) alongside evolution.
It's a board largely blinded to certain realities as witnessed by its move to establish abstinence-only sex education in high schools in a state with one of the nation's highest teenage pregnancy rates.
While reviewing standards for social studies, board members recently made an embarrassing decision to remove a popular children's author, who they mistook for someone who wrote about Marxism.
Then there is the fact that some current board members have made clear their distaste for public schools, electronic textbooks and ethics rules banning cronyism in the management of the school fund.