Board rejects increased textbook fact-checking
AUSTIN — The Texas State Board of Education on Wednesday narrowly voted down a proposal to have university professors fact-check state-approved elementary and high school textbooks.
“While I am disappointed with the vote on my amendment, we did adopt other amendments that will strengthen our process,” said Thomas Ratliff, the Mount Pleasant Republican behind the proposal. “It’s a step in the right direction, just not as big a step as I had hoped for.”
Texas textbooks long have been plagued by controversy. Last year, when the board OK’d the first new state-approved social studies textbooks in a dozen years, they were criticized for passages that addressed everything from free-market economics to the faith of the Founding Fathers. Advocacy groups like the Texas Freedom Network said the coverage of these issues was clearly biased and reflected the religious and political leanings of the Republican-dominated board.
Months went by without any news, however, until earlier this fall when the mother of a high school freshman from Katy complained about a passage
found in her son’s 2016 edition World Geography textbook that referred to African slaves as “workers.” The online version of the McGraw-Hill book was soon changed but not before the story went viral.
The national outrage over the passage, however, did not sway the board Wednesday. Members voted 8-7 against Ratliff ’s proposal to set up a panel of higher education experts to vet K-12 instructional materials for errors. Republican members, except Ratliff and Tom Maynard of Florence, voted against the plan.
TFN President Kathy Miller blasted the board’s decision, saying, “With all the controversies that have made textbook adoptions in Texas look like a clown show, it’s mindboggling and downright embarrassing that the board voted this down. Instead of appointing qualified historians, scientists and mathematicians to review proposed textbooks for accuracy, board members are leaving it up to schoolchildren to do the fact checking.”
Roni Dean-Burren, the Katy mother who first complained of the McGrawHill passage on slaves, on Wednesday said she was not surprised but disappointed by the vote. As a high school English teacher for 11 years and a former curriculum specialist, she said she thinks textbooks should go through multiple vetting stages before they make their way into Texas classrooms.
“I think it is absolutely indicative of this sort of obsession, I think, the board has with being right, and this obsession they have with being infallible,” said Dean-Burren, who is currently in the second year of a Ph.D. program at the University of Houston focused on curriculum and instruction. “Clearly they do need that kind of help. So, yeah, it’s real comical to me ... They are so full of poo, it’s ridiculous.”
School districts are not required to use stateapproved instructional materials, but most do because they adhere to Texas’ curriculum standards, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS. Before new materials are approved, panels of “content experts” — mostly current and retired teachers, parents, and business people — review the books for errors and to ensure they conform to TEKS. But some on the board think the process does not have enough oversight and worry the panels spend too much time checking for adherence to curriculum standards and not for errors.
Also on Wednesday, the board adopted another Ratliff proposal that will require most of the members on these review panels have “sufficient content expertise and experience.”