Dec. 2, 2013
At the latest front in the war over Tennessee textbooks, a Williamson County parent whose objections helped spark the entire controversy now says all the books her group has reviewed have flaws.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore’s quest to discard a geography book she claimed was anti-Semitic failed last year. But now as Tennessee school districts prepare to adopt new textbooks for 2014-15, she has broadened her target to include one of the most powerful companies in public education: Pearson, a publishing company that she alleges has a history of bias.

“If they’re going to pay for a product, it better not be defective,” said Cardoza-Moore, who was among several parents who spoke in November at the state Senate Education Committee’s hearings on the role of the state textbook commission.

Her group’s complaints have ignited a textbook uproar in the state legislature, arming conservative lawmakers with a litany of passages and excerpts they claim are biased or inaccurate. Battles over textbooks, on display during the recent two-day hearings, have played out elsewhere, most notably in Texas. Here, Republican lawmakers say it began with anecdotes from parents in Williamson, Davidson and Sumner counties, but has now turned into a groundswell across the state.

Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville, chairwoman of the Education Committee — who called the Williamson County episode the “catalytic event” that began the statewide conversation — plans to introduce legislation that would give more sway to public input in the approval of textbooks. It’s one of several bills involving textbooks that could arise next year.

“I’m just looking for accuracy,” Gresham said. “I’m just looking for (textbooks) to be correct.”

As a part of the textbook adoption cycle in Tennessee, social studies books are now up for review for all grade levels. Local school boards make the final decisions, but they rely heavily on teachers’ suggestions from lists approved by the Tennessee Board of Education via the textbook commission, a 10-member group of educators, nine of whom are appointed by the governor. More than 70 social studies books — many flagged by conservatives — were approved for a six-year cycle on Oct. 25.

Top Republican lawmakers have asked that the state board of education take a second look at some of the titles it just approved.

 

Dec. 1, 2013

Who’s interested in what knowledge is going into schoolchildren’s heads?

A wide range of people, actually: educators and parents, of course; school boards, elected and appointed; legislators; and religious and political organizations.

That interest has spilled into heated discussions about textbook selection from Texas to Virginia, and it is now warming up in Tennessee. How it unfolds could be a major indicator of where education is headed in this state.
 

When it comes to textbooks, national attention usually turns to Texas, whose large market for textbooks tends to dictate practices in other states. But the conversation there has gotten ugly, with some state education officials pushing for inclusion of creationism and disputes over climate change in science texts.

In Virginia in 2010, the controversy was over a fourth-grade history textbook that relied on erroneous claims by pseudo-historians that thousands of African-Americans fought for the South during the Civil War.

Then there is the study by a North Carolina State University researcher that found 12 of the most popular middle school science textbooks are riddled with unintentional errors, such as maps showing the equator passing through the southern U.S. and a reversed photo that puts the torch in the wrong hand of the Statue of Liberty.

Remember when we just worried about textbooks being out of date?

Last month, Tennessee’s Senate Education Committee held a hearing on the Tennessee Textbook Commission’s process for reviewing K-12 books, and Sen. Delores Gresham of Somerville and Mike Bell of Riceville stated afterward in a letter to the State Board of Education that “Troubling revelations came to light from both oral and written testimony, which described inaccuracies, biases, and outright fabrications in many of the social studies textbooks reviewed in the current cycle.”

Gresham and Bell want the board and the commission to go back and reconsider books that were approved in October. Those books are to be used for six years beginning next year; such is the textbook cycle set out under state law.