Testimony of John Kingman

Senate Nominations Committee

April 22, 2009

I am opposed to the reappointment of Dr. Don McLeroy as Chairman of the State Board of Education (SBOE) and here's why.

According to a Houston Chronicle article from May 21, 2008(1), Mrs. Mary Helen Berlanga, who has been a member of the board since 1984, sent a letter to Governor Perry in which she said Dr. McLeroy is a “master of deceit” and should be replaced.

Mrs. Berlanga also criticized Dr. McLeroy for not including Hispanic experts in the development of the ELAR TEKS. “Any intelligent, logical person would have named an expert who had dealt with Hispanic children and language minority children since more than 47 percent of the 4.5 million students in our public schools are Hispanic.”

In the July 16, 2008, hearing of the House Public Education Committee, legislators learned from testimony that the new ELAR TEKS don't completely align to college readiness standards. The last Legislature passed a law mandating that TEKS align with those standards. They broke the law.

The legislators also learned that in November, 2007, the board, under Dr. McLeroy, had rejected a math textbook without reason. Board members who voted to reject that textbook refused to give reasons for doing so. Yet under a law passed by the Legislature in 1995, Senate Bill 1, the state board may reject a textbook only if it fails to cover the state's curriculum standards, has factual errors, or fails to meet manufacturing requirements. Subsequent opinions from two state attorneys general – a Democrat and a Republican – have upheld those limits on the board's ability to control textbook content. Again, they broke the law.

In July of 2008, the board, under McLeroy, adopted vague, very general guidelines for Bible classes that public schools may teach as electives throughout the state. The board refused to give school districts and teachers the guidance they need to create courses that are respectful of the Bible, protect the religious freedom of students and keep our neighborhood schools out of court.

The board ignored the clear intent of the Legislature – expressed explicitly in statute and in communications between legislators and board members – that these classes be based on clear, specific content standards or TEKS.

Using public schools to promote some religious views over others is not religious freedom. And it's not constitutional.

Just this year, we saw the result of Dr. McLeroy's most recent fiasco, the high school science TEKS. In this case Dr. McLeroy consistently fought the consensus of the scientific community regarding high school biology exclaiming at one point, “I disagree with all these experts! Somebody has to stand up to these experts!”(2) This from the man who is charged with the responsibility of educating our future experts!

The upshot is that the science TEKS were altered ways that encourage the presentation of creationist claims about the complexity of the cell, the completeness of the fossil record, and the age of the universe. This, in turn, opens the door to the possibility of costly litigation over the constitutionality of the TEKS and/or the textbooks that result. This is Dr. McLeroy's legacy for the next ten years.

I urge you to NOT approve Dr. McLeroy's nomination, and send a strong message to the State Board of Education that playing politics with our children's education is not acceptable.

Thank you.

John Kingman 307 S. Tumbleweed Trail Austin, TX