Why the Texas BOE is important in all 50 States
The Texas Board of Education defines Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. If the TEKS define science courses as filled with non-science, or social studies as filled with American jingoism, those become our Texas textbook standards.
The SBOE for Texas picks textbooks for a state
approved list. Textbook publishers are notoriously
weak-kneed. They will adjust textbooks to the TEKS.
Only textbooks which, in the opinion of the SBOE, adequately meet our TEKS will be on the approved list.
Texas is a big buy for textbook publishers, and the publishers do not want to produce multiple versions of their texts. It's true that any of the 1000+ school districts in the state can buy any texts they wish, WITH THEIR OWN MONEY. If they want the state to buy the books, they must choose among books on the approved list. I expect that no district in Texas wants to buy texts with their own money.
So what can you do, if you live outside Texas?
Help stop the defaulting by my fellow Democrats, who in the most recent elections for districts in Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, ran nobody.
Get your friends and relatives in Texas talking about the State Board of Education in Texas. Get them discussing it with their friends, neighbors, associates. We need candidates for many of the 4-year terms on which filing will open in early December of 2009. These will probably be Democrats, though we have two good Republicans, one from west of Fort Worth, one from Lubbock, on the state board. We need potential candidates to visit state board meetings first, to see if they'd like to serve. It meets about 7 times a year, usually all of a Thursday and Friday, almost always about three blocks from our state capitol in Austin. There is no salary. Expenses, however, are paid.
--John Keohane
keohane@prodigy.net
Austin, Texas