Texas may be screwing over their public school children’s education (and, via the textbook market, our kids’ too), but at least Texas is doing something right: they won’t permit a creationist institute to hand out graduate degrees in science education.
Via the NCSE:
The Institute for Creation Research suffered a significant legal defeat in its lawsuit over the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board’s 2008 decision to deny the ICR’s request for a state certificate of authority to offer a master’s degree in science education from its graduate school…
When in California, the ICR graduate school was accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, which requires candidate institutions to affirm a list of Biblical Foundations, including “the divine work of non-evolutionary creation including persons in God’s image.” TRACS is not recognized by the state of Texas, however, and after the ICR moved from Santee, California, to Dallas, Texas, the ICR expressed its intention to seek accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
The US District Court hearing the legal appeal clearly wasn’t impressed:
“It appears that although the Court has twice required Plaintiff to re-plead and set forth a short and plain statement of the relief requested, Plaintiff is entirely unable to file a complaint which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering, and full of irrelevant information”
Hopefully this doesn’t mean that the yahoos on the Texas State Board of Education will next set their sights on the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board that had the good sense to deny the ICR initial request.
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