The Issues of HB 4294 in Texas

Text summarized from a report from Donna Garner in Texas

In Texas’ present educational process, each textbook and the required accompanying digitized version sold to a school have all gone through the public hearings and the careful examination of the present textbook adoption process in which the elected members of the SBOE ultimately decide whether to adopt the instructional materials.

The public has been able to obtain hard copies of the textbooks up for adoption, study them for accuracy and content, and can then present their findings in public hearings. The work by Neal Frey of the Educational Research Analysts carefully details factual errors, which must be corrected by the publisher (fines are levied for each left uncorrected by publishers) before being used in the classroom. Neal Frey told the Senate Education Committee last week that six months of laborious reading of four social studies books recently yielded 744 factual errors. Publishers obviously need this kind of oversight.

The thoroughness of this process results in more excellent textbooks in the Texas classroom.

And also in the classrooms of many other American states! Because of this well-established textbook adoption process, many states set their textbook adoption process a year behind that in Texas. They know that most of the factual errors will be caught during this process.

If HB 4294 is signed into law, it will change this process. There would be two separate adoption processes (1) with tight scrutiny, public input, and SBOE approval and (2) one with very little scrutiny and no public input. Which route will most publishers choose, particularly those with something to hide? The answer is obvious.

HB 4294 inserts a completely separate digitized textbook adoption process over which the elected members of the Texas State Board of Education have no oversight or authority. These would be submitted to the unelected Commissioner of Education (aka, Texas Education Agency) who will choose a group of experts, who would be unable to devote the massive amounts of time necessary to provide adequate attention.

Also, HB 4294 would provide for digitalized textbooks to be the main teaching arena for students, despite the fact that the $20 Million Texas Technology Immersion Pilot (TTIP) conducted in the 2004–2008 school years by the U. S. Department of Education resulted in a study that repeatedly showed that students made no statistically significant academic progress.

It is no assurance that the instructional materials would have to follow the SBOE-adopted standards. Standards have not been the problem in textbooks—errors have been. Senators have been trying to alleviate parents’ displeasure over HB 4294 by promising that a set of thirty books would be in the classroom. Such a number is useless when teachers have 134–150 students! Even the teacher who chooses to use textbooks would be unable to give homework in such a situation.

That class set of SBOE-approved, hardcover textbooks would gather dust if students were all supplied with taxpayer-purchased student laptops loaded with the digitized textbooks that have been adopted under the Commissioner's list and that have circumvented the close scrutiny of the SBOE.

Donna Garnera is an education activist who is the lead writer of the Texas Alternative Document (TAD) and the English Success Standards (English / Language Arts / Reading for Grades K-12) and the Writer/Consultant for MyStudyHall.com, an online tutorial that teaches ELAR to students, ages ten to adults.

To view testimonies before the Senate Education Committee on this matter, please go to http://www.senate.state.tx.us/avarchive/?yr=2009. Click on May 19: Senate Committee on Education (Part 1). Hear Neal Frey of Educational Research Analysts, Donna Garner, and MerryLynn Gerstenschlager toward the middle of this audio record.