Texas Insider

By Bill Ames
 
The purpose of this commentary is to emphasize to mainstream Texas parents & citizens the critical importance of electing conservative candidates to the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) in the March 2 Republican primaries.  After explaining some of the life-impacting decisions the SBOE has recently made to benefit Texas’ schoolchildren, I give a few of my own personal endorsements for voting that begins today via Early Voting.

Curriculum Impacts our Kids
A few days ago I perused the science textbook used by my granddaughter, a sixth grade honor roll student at the Prosper ISD in northwest Collin County.  I was pleased to find that the textbook contained no propaganda supporting the myth of manmade global warming.  Nor were there any doomsday tales of an environmental holocaust designed to frighten young children.

For this, we can thank the Texas State Board of Education’s conservative bloc, which regularly rejects similar attempts by education establishment leftists to substitute social engineering for academic facts.  In 2001, for example, the SBOE rejected another science textbook that included the following text:

“Some scholars believe that the spread of democracy, and the Industrial Revolution, are at the root of the environmental crisis”.

“Scriptural instruction to be good stewards of the Creation have thus far not moderated Christian ruthlessness toward our environment”.

“Some people think that we need a world government to deal with the many complex global issues confronting human society”.

Attacks from the Media
Texas’ state media, meanwhile, is engaged in vitriolic, ad hominem attacks on the SBOE conservatives, even hurling insults and lies rather than engaging in rational debate and logic. 

On January 27, 2010, for example, the Denton Record-Chronicle huffed, “A large and disruptive segment of the Texas State Board of Education is not only ignorant …..It is proudly and aggressively ignorant, which goes beyond simple ignorance and ventures into the territory of malignant stupidity”.

Excuse Me?

A frequent taunt by the media is that the SBOE conservatives often rule against education establishment “experts” while developing curriculum.  As we examine specific subjects, we shall see how the “experts” have fared against SBOE conservatives’ common sense.

Mainstream Texan citizens and parents can agree with the temper tantrum-spewing media on only one point:  That the conservative bloc of the SBOE has had an overriding influence over curriculum development in Texas for some time.

SBOE Wins National Recognition for Curriculum Development
Wandering in its own biased version of road rage, the media chose to ignore that on January 14, 2010, Education Week, the industry’s most influential publication, issued its annual “Quality Counts” report.  In this report, Texas is given a perfect score of 100, a solid “A”, for curriculum development.  The recognition elevates the Texas SBOE, controlled by conservatives, to the top six curriculum developers among the 50 states.

Additionally, Education Week reported that 11 other states use Texas’ standards as a guide for their own development.

For the Board’s conservatives, this recognition has not come easily.

In developing curriculum for every subject, they have had to overcome the shrill opposition of the education establishment leftists and their lobbyists.

The accomplishments go well beyond a couple of science textbooks.

History Textbooks
In 2002, the SBOE corrected history textbooks that had been decimated by a publisher.  The SBOE conservatives re-introduced America’s heritage, achievements, and patriotism into the textbooks. 

A few examples? 

The Wright Brothers first powered flight had been omitted from a textbook, being replaced by African-American female air show pilot Bessie Coleman, a change driven by the publisher’s overly enthusiastic rush to multicultural content. 

Likewise, Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk and John F. Kennedy’s patriotic “We choose to go to the moon” speech were not included, replaced by more politically correct astronauts Sally Ride and Franklin R. Chang-Diaz. 

The invasion of Omaha Beach was characterized in the book as a military disaster. 

The construction of the Erie Canal, America’s foremost engineering achievement to that time, was described as nothing more than an exploitation of labor. 

The SBOE, led by its conservatives, corrected each of these attempts at history revisionism.

An important point is worth noting here.  Any student in Texas, of whatever ethnicity, is deprived of a complete education if he can complete a history course not appreciating America’s achievements such as the Wright brothers first powered flight and the construction of the Erie Canal, or feel the patriotic pride caused by America’s Normandy invasion or landing the first man on the moon.

Health & Sex Education
In the health curriculum, the SBOE rejected the “experts”, and lobbyist Planned Parenthood’s, demands for an anything-goes sex education curriculum.  Planned Parenthood needs thousands of sexually active Texas teens to keep its abortion mills humming along.  An example is its latest addition in Houston, built smack dab in the middle of surrounding minority communities upon which it preys for its “business”.  Large numbers of minorities have rightfully protested the opening of this facility. 

But rather than caving to the “experts” demands to encourage teen sexual activity, the SBOE conservatives, in compliance with state education code, implemented an abstinence-based program in Texas public schools.

Mathematics
In November 2007, SBOE conservatives rejected “fuzzy”, or “reform” math, that required third grade students to learn only multiplication tables x0, x1, x2, x5, and x10.

They did this under full duress from “experts” belonging to the Texas Citizens for Science organization, which whined, “The reform math program was recommended by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and has proven successful in achieving high scores in national studies”.  Further, the organization claimed, “Math instructional programs should be chosen and taught by the trained and qualified math teachers in Texas, not by the untrained and unqualified members of the State Board of Education”.

A current reform math story is unfolding in Seattle, Washington, and is worth mentioning here.  The Seattle public schools recently adopted the reform math curriculum.  Parents, and a University of Washington professor, went to King County Superior Court, asking to overturn the School Board’s decision for reform math and force the district to consider other textbook options. They argued that the curriculum would do harm, by widening the achievement gap between middle-class and underprivileged students.

On February 4, 2010, Judge Julie Spector ruled that the Seattle board’s decision to use the reform math program was “arbitrary and capricious”. She ordered the board to reconsider the matter.

“The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there is insufficient evidence for any reasonable member to approve selection of the program”.

In her ruling, Spector noted that the state’s Board of Education had declared the curriculum “mathematically unsound” and that the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction did not recommend the curriculum.

She also said that studies of similar reform math at Cleveland and Garfield High Schools in Washington state showed that test scores had declined.

Chalk up one for the “untrained and unqualified” SBOE conservatives.  Zero for the “experts” at the Texas Citizens for Science and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Reading
SBOE conservatives also won the reading curriculum battle, choosing phonics over whole language.

In its May 2008 meeting, the SBOE rejected the “English Coalition experts” standards proposal. That coalition supported whole language, inventive spelling, and no direct systematic instruction of grammar/usage.

How does whole language affect our kids?

As written in the article, “Whole language versus Phonics – The battle continues”:

“The Whole Language system teaches children to guess at words by looking at the pictures on the page, to memorize a few dozen frequently used words (called site words), to skip over words they don’t know, to substitute words that seem to fit, and to predict the words they think will come next.

“Many schools give high marks and happy report cards to children who are good at guessing and memorizing words, so parents don’t realize that their children are being taught to guess instead of to read. Self-esteem is a higher priority than literacy.

“Youngsters are allowed to use ‘inventive spelling’ if they can’t spell a word. Their ‘creativity’ will not be marked wrong.

“But how this method plays out leaves kids at a real disadvantage. Take the example of one student who read this story to his class: ‘If I would have magic beans, I would save the beans. And when I save the beans, then I will give them away. The End.’ Using inventive spelling, however, he wrote, ‘if i wd hf mg isc I wd save then been and one I save the bes then I wd g thm way the end’ “.

It’s rather easy to date and track the Whole Language system from its official adoption by the state of California in 1987. California was a model for other states that wanted to be “progressive.”

Numerous studies revealed that children who had phonics instruction consistently outperformed those with whole language.  For example, “a two-year study of first and second-graders in California’s Inglewood Unified School District compared phonics to whole language instruction. By the end of the second grade, phonics students scored more than a year above grade level in word recognition, passage recognition and vocabulary. In the ability to sound out and pronounce new words, these students scored almost four years above grade level.”

The results of studies and lack of success in whole language instruction opened eyes in California. On September 12, 1995, the California legislature unanimously passed legislation referred to as the ABC law. The law states:  “It is the intent of the Legislature that the fundamental skills of all subject areas, including systematic, explicit phonics, spelling, and basic computational skills, be included in the adopted curriculum frameworks and that these skills and related tasks increase in depth and complexity from year to year.”

Whole language reading curricula is a bad idea that rendered a generation of California students functionally illiterate.

Chalk up one more for SBOE conservatives.  Zero for the “English Coalition experts”.

Evolution
In early 2009, the SBOE conservatives preserved academic integrity in the classroom by allowing discussion, by science teachers and students, that challenges evolution theory.  Politically correct educators and “scientific experts”, not wanting any challenge of their anti-intelligent design ideology, demanded that all such questioning be censored.  

They lost.   A win for academic freedom, a loss for censorship by “experts”.

History Curriculum
And this year, SBOE conservatives are turning back the left’s attempts to present its negative, biased view of history.  Unbelievably, radical “educators and scholars” who rushed to join review panels and engaged in a year-long effort to revise history and impose their ideology on the SBOE and the state’s curriculum, removed Christmas and Rosh Hashanah, children’s biographies of Washington and Lincoln, Independence Day, Veteran’s Day, and the Liberty Bell from their standards proposals, as just a few examples. 

They also dismissed America’s free enterprise system, America’s achievements, and American exceptionalism (the notion that we live in a great country), while declaring instead that America is an imperialistic, oppressive, exploitative nation.

Why did the review panels prepare such proposals to rewrite history? 

If you are a leftist educator, and want to do your part to help create a socialist United States of America, your role is to tear down our most basic institutions, and instill contempt for America in our youth.

Fortunately, the SBOE is utilizing its authority to reverse the negative revisionism in the proposals. Principled SBOE conservatives are once again leading the charge. 

SBOE Makeup
The Texas State Board of Education is made up of 15 elected members.   They receive no compensation, and have no staff.  They represent geographic districts, just as Texas legislators and senators.  A primary responsibility of the SBOE is to develop curriculum (TEKS) for Texas’ public schools.

Currently, 5 SBOE members are Democrats, 10 are Republicans.   Of the 10 republicans, 7 make up a strong, unified conservative bloc.  These conservatives have been responsible for keeping the leftist education establishment at bay in Texas.

Vote for Conservative SBOE Candidates
Texas Republican primary voters have an opportunity to recognize the importance of the SBOE conservatives’ contributions, as revealed by the common sense curricula they have developed.  Further evidence is Education Week’s “A” grade in curriculum development. These candidates deserve your vote in the March 2 primary.

Because some SBOE primary races are more contentious than others, in my opinion the conservative candidates, many of whom are facing Republican-in-name-only opponents, are as follows:

• SBOE District 3:  Joanie Muenzler, running for the seat of Democrat Rick Agosto, who is not seeking re-election.
• SBOE District 5:  Incumbent Ken Mercer, running against lobbyist and Democrat party donor Tim Tuggey.
• SBOE District 9:  Incumbent Don McLeroy, running against lobbyist Thomas Ratliff, who sends signals that he would go-along-to-get-along with leftist educators, rather than oppose their attempts to implement leftist curriculum.
• SBOE District 10:  Brian Russell, running for the seat of conservative Cynthia Dunbar, who is not seeking re-election.
• SBOE District 15:  Challenger Randy Rives, opposing incumbent Republican Bob Craig, who often votes with SBOE Democrats.

To determine if you reside in one of these districts, access: http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/.  Enter your address and district type = state board of education.   The district number and name of the incumbent will be displayed.

Bill Ames is an education activist who lives in Dallas.  He has worked on Texas curriculum and textbook issues, beginning in 2001.  He spent much of 2009 as the only conservative member of the review panel for U. S. history.