For the past many years, the buying power of the Texas State Board of Education has been a big factor in determining what our New Hampshire kids read in their textbooks.  Among many other benefits, the Common Core State Standards and the companion Next Generation Science Standards provide new and better yardsticks for text books.  The new standards liberate the rest of us from the dictates of the Texas board, all the more so because Texas has so far not elected to implement the Common Core.

Here is the New York Times coverage of the appointment of anti-science members to the biology committee recommending texts to the Texas board.  Read this and be glad these folks aren’t determining what science texts our kids will be using:

AUSTIN, Tex. — One is a nutritionist who believes “creation science” based on biblical principles should be taught in the classroom. Another is a chemical engineer who is listed as a “Darwin Skeptic” on the Web site of the Creation Science Hall of Fame. A third is a trained biologist who also happens to be a fellow of the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based center of the intelligent-design movement and a vice president at an evangelical ministry in Plano, Tex.

As Texas gears up to select biology textbooks for use by high school students over the next decade, the panel responsible for reviewing submissions from publishers has stirred controversy because a number of its members do not accept evolution and climate change as scientific truth.

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via Creationists on Texas Panel for Biology Textbooks – NYTimes.com.