Texas a Battleground for Accuracy, Fairness in Textbooks
by Jim Brown
July 19, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Some members of the conservative-led Texas Board of Education worry their authority over school curriculum standards and textbooks is being snuffed out the Legislature.The Republican-dominated Texas Legislature passed a bill during its spring session that handed authority over writing K-12 curriculum to the state's commissioner of education and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. But critics claim the bill strengthens the liberal education bureaucracy by stripping power away from the elected State Board of Education.
Conservative board member Terry Leo of Spring fears lawmakers may soon restrict the board's control over the textbook adoption process as well.
"Basically, if it is not in the curriculum and it is not a blatant factual error, like two plus two equals five, the board cannot remove content or add content to a textbook," she explains. "So the Legislature could take our ability to review textbooks away altogether."
A 1995 court ruling prohibits the State Board of Education from rejecting the content of a textbook even if a majority of the board objects to the book. Leo says she wants to see that decision overturned because of the far-reaching effect of the decisions made in the Lone Star State.
"[P]ublishers come to Texas to write the textbooks for the rest of the nation," notes Leo -- but under that 1995 court ruling, members of the elected board in Texas have not been able to request more historical documents in the history textbooks, for example, or that viewpoint discrimination and editorial bias be removed, she says. "We have not been able to do that," Leo laments. "Hopefully our current attorney general will reverse that ruling, and that opinion should come down in a couple of weeks.
Leo says Texas currently has a very transparent textbook review process, but many technology companies are lobbying state lawmakers to eliminate that process so they can have direct access to classrooms.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
