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AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas' school board approved new history
textbooks Friday for use across the nation's second-largest state, but
only after defeating six and seeing a top publisher withdraw a seventh -
capping months of outcry over lessons some academics say exaggerate the
influence of Moses in American democracy and negatively portray
Muslims.
The State Board of Education
sanctioned 89 books and classroom software packages that more than 5
million public school students will begin using next fall. But it took
hours of sometimes testy discussion and left publishers scrambling to
make hundreds of last-minute edits, some to no avail. A proposal to
delay the vote to allow the board and general public to better check
those changes was defeated.
"I'm comfortable
enough that these books have been reviewed by many, many people," said
Thomas Ratliff, a Republican and the board's vice chairman. "They are
not perfect, they never will be."
The history,
social studies and government textbooks were submitted for approval
this summer, and since then, academics and activists on the right and
left have criticized many of them. Some worry they are too sympathetic
to Islam or downplay the achievements of President Ronald Reagan. Others
say they overstate the importance of Moses on America's Founding
Fathers or trumpet the free-market system too much.
Bitter
ideological disputes over what gets taught in Texas classrooms have for
years attracted national attention. The new books follow the state
academic curriculum adopted in 2010, when board Republicans approved
standards including conservative-championed topics, like Moses and his
influence on systems of law. They said those would counter what they saw
as liberal biases in classrooms.
Friday's
10-5 vote, with all Republicans supporting the books and Democrats
opposing them, was the first of its kind since 2002. The books will be
used for at least a decade.
Mavis Knight, a Dallas Democrat, said she couldn't support books adhering to the 2010 academic standards.
"I
think it's a disservice to the students when we have a particular bent
in which we present things to them," said Knight, who is retiring and
attended her last board meeting.
Texas is such
a large state that textbooks written for it can influence the content
of classrooms materials sold elsewhere around the nation - though that
national clout may be waning. A 2011 state law allows school districts
to buy books both on and off the board list. Technology, including
electronic lessons, has also made it easier for publishers to design
content for individual states.
The final vote
was supposed to be tame, but an effort earlier in the week to give
preliminary approval collapsed, with board members raising concerns
about a series of issues, including Moses, Muslims and Common Core, a
national set of curriculum standards in math and English that's
forbidden by Texas law.
That delay prompted a
decision Friday by one of the nation's largest educational publishers,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, to withdraw a proposed "United States
Government: Principles in Practice" high-school book that included a
total of five textbook and software products. The company said in a
statement that its materials were a "national program" and did not meet
100 percent of Texas' academic standards.
The
board later voted down six proposed books and classrooms tools offered
by another publisher, WorldView Software, after experts and activists
raised numerous concerns. WorldView tried to change its texts or provide
justifications for them, submitting 466 pages late Thursday for a
single book and packet of electronic classroom materials, World History
Studies.
Republican member Geraldine "Tincy"
Miller said the board "sent a message" to publishers unwilling to make
edits in a timely fashion.
But others bristled.
"What
we saw today shows very clearly that the process the State Board of
Education uses to adopt textbooks is a sham," said Kathy Miller,
president of the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning group. "This
board adopted textbooks with numerous late changes that the public had
little opportunity to review and comment on and that even board members
themselves admitted they had not read."
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