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.
“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.
