MySA.com: KENS 5: Education: Board rips textbook measure

I've received an e-mail from a friend in Texas about this April 29, 2005, article by Jenny Lacoste-Caputo, Express-News staff writer. The title-linked online publication requires free registration (if you are signed in at a sister Belo Interactive Web site anywhere in the country, that registration will serve).

AUSTIN — State Board of Education members say a bill that aims to boost technology in classrooms would rob them of the authority to approve public school textbooks and pave the way for Texas schoolchildren to depend on "unknown writers and publishers who dwell in cyberspace."

If it becomes law, House Bill 4 would replace the extensive review and adoption process the board has followed for six decades. The measure would combine money for textbooks and technology, lumping them into one category called "instructional materials."

[snip]

Board members unanimously said the bill is a bad idea. Leo and other opponents say the measure will give schools the discretion to teach information found on the Internet without outside review to make sure the information conforms with the state's mandated curriculum, called Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.

I think the key word there is unanimously. The Texas State Board of Education famously split not too long ago over issues raised when some textbook publishers tried to sneak redefinitions of marriage into textbooks headed for Texas. I mostly hear from the folks who fought to get those redefinitions removed. But when even the folks on the other side of that dispute are crying "foul" I'm inclined to think that there really might be an effort underway to bypass any outside review of what is used in classrooms.

Since many states more or less defer to Texas on textbook standards and review, this is a heads-up for more than Texas.

UPDATE: From freemarket.org:

Textbook Bill May Jeopardize Education
25 May 2005

The Technology Textbook Proposal, which was originally part of H.B. 4, is currently in process of being added to H.B. 2 in a conference committee. This proposal relates to the use of internet as the primary instructional material in public schools. This would be very dangerous because it enables internet companies to supply electronic textbooks, which will not require the same evaluation and adoption process as current print textbooks. Parents and members of the School Board of Education would have no say in what materials children are subjected to in the continually changing internet textbooks.

ACTION: Please call your legislators and ask them to oppose the addition of the Technology Textbook Proposal to H.B.2. CLICK HERE for the list of key legislators to contact.