YIKES!
From a colleague who was born and raised in Texas: "I think having academics as a percentage of the review boards, alongside teachers, parents, and community members is a good idea. These markets are akin to municipal monopolies. They are big business and there are not sufficient levels of competition to drive quality in content. The Texas state legislature has been at war against public education (at all levels) for some time now. They have authored the review boards to facilitate extremist ideological agendas--men riding dinosaurs, negating global warming, downplaying slavery in the Confederacy, sex ed, etc. I never really understood just how bad education in Texas was until I attended schools in Germany back in the 90s. Today I am constantly reminded just how dire the situation is as I engage with my international students. I have students from Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, China, India, the Netherlands, and Canada who know more about my own country's government and history than I was ever taught in Texas public schools. Texas is not just falling behind; it's over the event horizon."
AUSTIN, Texas ? Top Texas education officials rejected Wednesday letting university experts fact-check textbooks approved for use in public-school classrooms statewide, instead reaffirming a vetting system that has helped spark years of ideological battles over how potentially thorny lessons in history and science are taught.
The Board of Education approves textbooks in the nation's second-largest state and stood by its vetting process ? despite a Houston-area mother recently complaining that a world geography book used by her son's ninth grade class referred to African slaves as "workers." The publisher, McGraw-Hill Education, apologized and moved to make immediate edits.
Republican board member Thomas Ratliff had proposed bringing in academics to check textbooks only for factual errors, but his measure failed 8-7 after lengthy discussion.
Recommended: How much do you know about Texas? Take our quiz
"I know people are concerned about pointy-headed liberals in the ivory tower making our process different or worse," Ratliff, of Mount Pleasant, said before the vote. "But I hold our institutions of higher education in fairly high regard."
Texas has 5.2 million public-school students, a large enough textbook market that publishers making modifications to meet its standards can affect material in other states.
As it mulls books proposed for approval, the board relies on citizen review panels ? often teachers, parents, business leaders or other experts ? whose members are nominated by board members. Other Texans can also check the books on their own and identify what they see as errors in public testimony during board meetings.
Rather than allowing academics to intervene, the board voted unanimously to tweak its current system, mandating that review panels be made up of "at least a majority" of people with "sufficient content expertise and experience" as determined by the Texas education commissioner.
"I think we're making it stronger and better and more expert than in the past," said Marty Rowley, an Amarillo Republican. San Antonio Republican Ken Mercer called the system "the best in America."
Ratliff had noted that some conservative board members have long stocked review panels with people more concerned with ideology than subject matter expertise. That gave rise to controversies over how textbooks handle climate change and evolution, or how they describe the influence biblical figures such as Moses had on America's Founding Fathers.
Supporters of his changes said it might have softened years of fights over textbooks that long have thrust the Republican-controlled board into the national spotlight.
"The public perception of our process is not positive and I think we all know that," said Erika Beltran, a Dallas Democrat.
After the proposal failed, Kathy Miller, president of the board watchdog group the Texas Freedom Network, said in a statement: "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."
Other board observers, though, said the current system didn't need major fixes.
Roy White, a retired Air Force pilot and head of a conservative group called Truth in Texas Textbooks, told members that the state "was fortunate" to have its current system. But he also complained that past textbooks deemphasized the role of Islamic extremism in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Reviewers from White's organization raised scores of objections to history and social studies textbooks up for board approval last year. He said its reviewers checked the McGraw Hill world geography book and missed the "workers" error, but they found 13 others ? including objections to how it covered the concepts of jihad and Cuban communism.
"You got humans involved, there are going to be some errors," White said.
Peace!
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2015/1118/Texas-rejects-allowing-academics-to-fact-check-public-school-textbooks
From a colleague who was born and raised in Texas: "I think having academics as a percentage of the review boards, alongside teachers, parents, and community members is a good idea. These markets are akin to municipal monopolies. They are big business and there are not sufficient levels of competition to drive quality in content. The Texas state legislature has been at war against public education (at all levels) for some time now. They have authored the review boards to facilitate extremist ideological agendas--men riding dinosaurs, negating global warming, downplaying slavery in the Confederacy, sex ed, etc. I never really understood just how bad education in Texas was until I attended schools in Germany back in the 90s. Today I am constantly reminded just how dire the situation is as I engage with my international students. I have students from Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, China, India, the Netherlands, and Canada who know more about my own country's government and history than I was ever taught in Texas public schools. Texas is not just falling behind; it's over the event horizon."
AUSTIN, Texas ? Top Texas education officials rejected Wednesday letting university experts fact-check textbooks approved for use in public-school classrooms statewide, instead reaffirming a vetting system that has helped spark years of ideological battles over how potentially thorny lessons in history and science are taught.
The Board of Education approves textbooks in the nation's second-largest state and stood by its vetting process ? despite a Houston-area mother recently complaining that a world geography book used by her son's ninth grade class referred to African slaves as "workers." The publisher, McGraw-Hill Education, apologized and moved to make immediate edits.
Republican board member Thomas Ratliff had proposed bringing in academics to check textbooks only for factual errors, but his measure failed 8-7 after lengthy discussion.
Recommended: How much do you know about Texas? Take our quiz
"I know people are concerned about pointy-headed liberals in the ivory tower making our process different or worse," Ratliff, of Mount Pleasant, said before the vote. "But I hold our institutions of higher education in fairly high regard."
Texas has 5.2 million public-school students, a large enough textbook market that publishers making modifications to meet its standards can affect material in other states.
As it mulls books proposed for approval, the board relies on citizen review panels ? often teachers, parents, business leaders or other experts ? whose members are nominated by board members. Other Texans can also check the books on their own and identify what they see as errors in public testimony during board meetings.
Rather than allowing academics to intervene, the board voted unanimously to tweak its current system, mandating that review panels be made up of "at least a majority" of people with "sufficient content expertise and experience" as determined by the Texas education commissioner.
"I think we're making it stronger and better and more expert than in the past," said Marty Rowley, an Amarillo Republican. San Antonio Republican Ken Mercer called the system "the best in America."
Ratliff had noted that some conservative board members have long stocked review panels with people more concerned with ideology than subject matter expertise. That gave rise to controversies over how textbooks handle climate change and evolution, or how they describe the influence biblical figures such as Moses had on America's Founding Fathers.
Supporters of his changes said it might have softened years of fights over textbooks that long have thrust the Republican-controlled board into the national spotlight.
"The public perception of our process is not positive and I think we all know that," said Erika Beltran, a Dallas Democrat.
After the proposal failed, Kathy Miller, president of the board watchdog group the Texas Freedom Network, said in a statement: "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."
Other board observers, though, said the current system didn't need major fixes.
Roy White, a retired Air Force pilot and head of a conservative group called Truth in Texas Textbooks, told members that the state "was fortunate" to have its current system. But he also complained that past textbooks deemphasized the role of Islamic extremism in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Reviewers from White's organization raised scores of objections to history and social studies textbooks up for board approval last year. He said its reviewers checked the McGraw Hill world geography book and missed the "workers" error, but they found 13 others ? including objections to how it covered the concepts of jihad and Cuban communism.
"You got humans involved, there are going to be some errors," White said.
Peace!
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2015/1118/Texas-rejects-allowing-academics-to-fact-check-public-school-textbooks
