Responsive Education Solutions is the euphemistically-named company running the largest charter school district in Texas. Their schools are tuition-free, funded by taxpayers, and home to 17,000 students in the state.
Just one problem: Their textbooks promote Creationism, along with other examples of bad science. Zack Kopplin, building off of work by Jonny Scaramanga, explains:
… through an open records request, I was able to obtain a set of Responsive Ed’s biology “Knowledge Units,” workbooks that Responsive Ed students must complete to pass biology. These workbooks both overtly and underhandedly discredit evidence-based science and allow creationism into public-school classrooms.
A favorite creationist claim is that there is “uncertainty” in the fossil record, and Responsive Ed does not disappoint. The workbook cites the “lack of a single source for all the rock layers as an argument against evolution.”
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The curriculum tells students that a “lack of transitional fossils” is a “problem for evolutionists who hold a view of uninterrupted evolution over long periods of time.”
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… a Responsive Ed workbook teaches, “We do not know for sure whether vaccines increase a child’s chance of getting autism, but we can conclude that more research needs to be done.”
It just gets worse from there. If I were a parent sending my child to one of their schools, I would be furious. Lawsuit-filing furious. These schools are setting up children to fail in college from their scientific illiteracy. Even worse, they’re promoting the kinds of myths that would make David Barton proud.
The students deserve better than that.
(Image via Shutterstock)
