Virtually every public school district across the country has a policy on how challenges to materials should be handled. One of the many benefits of observing these policies is that they help to shield the districts’ own employees — teachers…
Tag: the working poor: invisible in america
Book Challenge Debates Often Fuelled by Willful Ignorance
Last year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David K. Shipler’s book The Working Poor: Invisible in America was one of seven that were briefly suspended en masse from the school district curriculum in the affluent Dallas enclave of Highland Park. Although the…
What Went Wrong in Highland Park?
In a disappointing but unsurprising move this week, the Dallas-area Highland Park Independent School District overhauled the process for approving books to be used in the curriculum. Instead of working from a list of pre-approved books, teachers will now be…
Highland Park Parent Withdraws Challenge to The Working Poor
The challenge to David K. Shipler’s nonfiction book The Working Poor in the Dallas-area Highland Park Independent School District ended this week before the review process could begin, as the parent who lodged the complaint abruptly withdrew it. Although she…
Working Poor Challenged in Highland Park ISD
Nearly two months after a review committee in the Dallas-area Highland Park Independent School District decided not to ban Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain from classrooms, a parent has challenged another of the seven books that…
Highland Park Requires Parental Permission for Classics
Forging ahead with an ill-considered plan that drew criticism from the National Coalition Against Censorship (including CBLDF) and the American Library Association, the Dallas-area Highland Park Independent School District last week revealed some of the books that students now need…