Fears Expressed Over Texas' Proposed Change in Selecting School Material
by Jim Brown
May 16, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Some members of the Texas Board of Education are strongly opposing an amendment to a property tax bill that they claim would give un-elected education bureaucrats too much power over the development of school curriculum.Conservative board members like Terri Leo of Spring fear Article 5 of House Bill 1 -- a property tax relief bill -- would strip them of their power over high curriculum. They contend the authority to approve curriculum would be handed over to the commissioner of education and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
Leo says the state board of education would have to rubber-stamp whatever the Coordinating Board approves.
"First of all, we're concerned when anybody comes in from an agency and has a power grab over an elected body," Leo shares. "Citizens have no recourse if the curriculum will end up in the hands of an un-elected bureaucratic organization. There will be no public hearings if people disagree with the curriculum."
The bill's sponsor, Republican Senator Florence Shapiro, did amend the measure to say the state board of education will still have authority over curriculum. But Leo says the provision is still not satisfactory -- and if passed with its current language, she contends the state's school children will be reading textbooks written by far-left professors like Robert Jensen of the University of Texas.
"[T]he curriculum is important [because] the curriculum elements must be covered in the textbooks," she says. "It's another way for 'Big Daddy' to get control of content in textbooks and content in curriculum -- and if there's no elected official that is a firewall between that and the average citizen and taxpayer, that is a very dangerous situation."
Leo fears the House will concur on Article 5. If the House does not concur, the bill goes to a conference committee made up of five state senators and five state representatives. Texas is the only state in the United States with a formal K-12 textbook-adoption system. Consequently textbooks adopted in Texas are what the rest of the nation has to choose from.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
