Texas Education Board Wants Power to Review Textbook Adoptions
by Jim Brown
February 7, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The Texas State Board of Education wants more control over textbooks that teach public school students about issues such as evolution, sex education, and American history. Board member Terri Leo of Spring, Texas, is seeking an opinion from State Attorney General Greg Abbott that would overturn an existing law, which bars the Texas Board of Education from reviewing the content of public school textbooks. Under the vague 1995 law, the Board cannot legally ask a publisher to remove or add content.
Currently, Leo notes, books that engage in viewpoint discrimination or portray deviant lifestyles cannot be challenged by the board. "We've seen history textbooks that have very little to do with history," she says. "They'll have two pages on Marilyn Monroe and maybe a paragraph on George Washington, and our board is prohibited by law to say that's not what we want to adopt in history. So we have to get that right."
Attorney General Abbott has up to 180 days to respond to Leo's request. Meanwhile, the education board member points out, publishers have virtual free reign to do whatever they want in a textbook, provided it meets curriculum standards.
"I have tried to go back to the legislature to get the legislature to undo this very unclear law," Leo says. However, she adds, "There was a particular legislator at the time who did want to remove power from the Board and doesn't mind publishers, liberal New York editors, with agendas putting them into textbooks."
Leo says what the Texas Board of Education wants is not books that berate or denigrate presidents and other cultural and political leaders. Rather, she says the board wants books that present the policies of U.S. officials and puts them in legitimate historical perspective. Her hope is that the Attorney General's forthcoming opinion will allow the Board to exercise some authority to impose reasonable standards on public school history books and other state-adopted textbooks.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
