GOP leaders endorse revision of history curriculum standards
By Gary Scharrer
gscharrer@express-news.net
Updated 12:34 a.m., Wednesday, March 16, 2011
AUSTIN — Pressure on the State Board of Education to revisit its controversial social studies curriculum standards increased Tuesday when three House Republican leaders expressed discomfort with the standards and how they were adopted.
Texas House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie; Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands; and House Administration Chairman Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth; criticized the new standards.
Various civil rights and minority advocacy organizations have opposed the standards, and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education think tank, gave the standards a harsh review last month, saying they offered “misrepresentations at every turn.”
“When groups like the Fordham Institute call our standards ‘a politicized distortion of history' and ‘an unwieldy tangle of social studies categories,' we have a problem,” Eissler said.
Critics fault the State Board of Education for considering nearly 200 last-hour amendments before taking a final vote last year.
“These standards and the way they were developed just don't pass the common-sense test,” Geren said. “The law has a process laid out for how to write our state's curriculum, and they thumbed their nose at it and wrote standards themselves.”
David Bradley, R-Beaumont, a leader of the board's social conservatives who championed the new curriculum standards, said he doubted a majority of the 15-member board would be willing to reopen the process.
The board has already started the curriculum rewrite for math standards, with health education to follow. Rewriting curriculum standards typically takes about 18 months, Bradley said.
The board does not have time to deal with redoing social studies, Bradley said, also noting the Texas Education Agency recently laid off 101 employees.
The willingness of House GOP leaders to speak out brings a bipartisan appeal for the board to reopen the social studies curriculum standards process, said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, chairman of the House Mexican American Legislative Caucus.
“It's not about who's right. It's about what's right,” he said. “When it comes to our public education, politics should be our last consideration.”
Pitts hinted that lawmakers can't afford $900 million to pay for controversial social studies textbooks.
“It's just not realistic,” said Pitts, who favors the board reopening the process.
Civil rights groups, including the GI Forum, LULAC and the NAACP, complained throughout the curriculum writing process.
Texas chapters of the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed a formal complaint with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education in December.
More than 68 percent of the 4.9 million Texas schoolchildren this year are minorities. The percentage of minority children will continue to increase during the 10 years the curriculum normally stays in place.
The board adopted the curriculum standards 10-5. Only the five minority members opposed them.
“It raises an enormous question. It's very compelling when you have every minority member of the State Board of Education voting against these standards,” Martinez Fischer said.
With minority children soon to fill 75 percent of Texas classrooms, state leaders “need to get this right,” he said.
The board faces “a credibility crisis,” said state Sen. Kirk Watson of Austin, the senior Democratic member of the Senate Nominations Committee.
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