There is a struggle in Texas right now over who will oversee education. The blocking of the reappointment of Chairman Don McElroy of the State Board of Education by liberal senators in the state legislature and the present attempt to strip the SBOE of authority (and thus citizens of input into that properly elected body) are the result of efforts by the media, egged on by organizations who are dedicated to keeping evolution in the science classroom and creationism out. Why do organizations such as the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network put so much time, effort, and money into this state and this particular fight? Any person or organization whose purpose is to ensure accuracy and give students a good education—enabling them to think on their own—weakens evolution’s hold on the mind of students and they know it. They also know that Texas is key to educational issues in the rest of the nation.

This fight in Texas is of vital importance to the education of Texas students—and all of America's. How does it affect the rest of the nation’s public school children? Texas and California are the two most influential states for education in the United States. California leads in being the first to push issues like homosexual teaching into public school curriculum (next year introducing this even for kindergarteners without recourse for objecting parents). Texas leads in educational accuracy. Texas’s current textbook adoption process results in more accurate and educationally excellent materials. Many states schedule their textbook adoption for the year following the Lone Star State’s because they realize that many factual errors in new educational material will be caught and corrected during this time.

Current Situation: HB 4294, which would place digitalized textbooks in Texas classrooms and circumvent the public hearings and careful scrutiny of the SBOE textbook adoption process, has been sent to Governor Perry’s desk.

Take Action

Urge Governor Rick Perry to veto the measure of HB 4294. Let’s keep education matters under the proper authority of the elected State Board of Education, and in so doing protect the voice of the people in education of our children—and save millions of tax dollars at the same time. Say no to publishers who would wish to line their pockets and circumvent the careful scrutiny of the SBOE textbook adoption process to the detriment of our children and our state’s future. Let us maintain our role in the nation as leader in textbook excellence.

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.

Dangers of HB 4294 in Texas

Donna Garner

Our Texas legislature has just passed HB 4291 that would put student laptops with digitized textbooks in our public schools. I have a question in light of the trouble hackers have caused with computers in the Defense Department. If the U. S. Defense Department cannot even protect its servers, how in the world do we in Texas expect to protect our public schools from similar hacker attacks? We certainly cannot spend the type of money they have at their disposal, nor do we have that type of well-trained technology personnel at our command.

Our legislature is living in a dream world if they think that the Texas education system can keep these laptops/digitized textbooks secure. Some of the best hackers have turned out to be computer-savvy teenagers who enjoy the challenge of breaking into their school's security systems. The more laptops, the more students trying to hack them.

It is frightening to think what kind of material could make it onto those laptops; and vulnerable children throughout our state could be intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically harmed for the rest of their lives by the simple click of a mouse. Hardcover textbooks carefully scrutinized by a well-planned public process do not present that kind of imminent danger. Please ask Governor Perry to veto HG 4294.