The Texas board of education has approved a new set of standards that will be used to create reading and English-language-arts materials for the fall of 2010.
Board members voted 9-6 on May 23 to reject a set of standards that working groups of teachers had approved and that had been posted online by the Texas Education Agency on May 15. Also, they voted 9-6 to approve a document that had been finished the previous evening and that most board members had received only a few hours before the vote. The same nine members voted together on both votes, including seven who call themselves social conservatives. (“Texas Curricular Debate Nears Conclusion,” May 21, 2008.)
Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the state education agency, said the final standards document merged an earlier version with the one that had been posted May 15. Compared with the existing set of standards, the new set contains more specificity for what teachers should do at each grade level, she said.
