I can tell you there are people on the SBOE who vilify public education as the work of the devil. And I wonder how they can have a sincere interest in advancing the education of our school-age children with an attitude that public education is an evil entity. So I believe that this represents a very logical and tangible alternative to what we currently have.
— Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, speaking at a Senate Education Committee hearing today on a bill to rein in the Texas State Board of Education
The current session of the Texas Legislature has seen an unprecedented number of bills filed that would remove or otherwise rein in the authority of the embarrassment that the state board has become. The Senate Education Committee this morning heard testimony on one such bill — Senate Bill 2275 — that would remove the SBOE’s role in adopting textbooks and curriclum and transfer it to the state’s education commissioner. Sen. Kel Seliger, a Republican from Amarillo, authored the bill with two other Republican and one Democratic senator, clear evidence that exasperation with the state board crosses party lines.
The hearing this morning featured a parade of witnesses (including TFN President Kathy Miller) testifying to the state board’s unfair processes, divisive ideological history and outright ineptitude. The speakers represented diverse subject areas ranging from science to language arts to mathematics. Nearly all were critical of the highly-politicized, convoluted process of adopting curriculum and textbooks that had done damage to their respective disciplines.
But the most interesting comments at the hearing came from committee members themselves, most of whom seemed very receptive to the bill. Sen. Seliger was especially persuasive in responding to Republican Sen. Dan Patrick’s questions about the reasons for this bill, explaining in detail the failure of the current process to properly respect the work of teachers and subject-area experts. Then came a devastating indictment of the board from Republican Sen. Averitt that perfectly summarized the case against the board:
Every once in a while you’ll find an instance where an elected body is diverted from their prescribed mission, and the prescribed mission here is to provide the best educational materials to our school children. And I’ll tell you my experience with the State Board of Education has been nothing but the worst case or example of partisan bickering and fighting, Republicans and Democrats alike.
The full transcipt of Sen. Averitt’s speech in the Senate Education Committee appears after the jump.
Sen. Seliger brought forward a committee substitute for his bill that preserves a more appropriate role for the elected members of the state board (allowing them to make changes at the end of the adoption process only with a four-fifths super-majority). The bill was left pending in committee this morning because the author is considering further changes to the bill, including:
- Adding a more formal role for college and university professors who are subject-area experts.
- Adding language that forces the commissioner of education to publicly disclose reasons for changing any part of the recommendation that comes from the teacher/professor workgroup process.
TFN believes this bill — particular with these two additions — represents a dramatic improvement over the existing process.
Sen. Averit’s full statement before the Senate Education Committee this morning:
Of course, I am a believer in the electoral process. It serves our country well and it has for several hundred years now.
Every once in a while you’ll find an instance where an elected body is diverted from their prescribed mission, and the prescribed mission here is to provide the best educational materials to our school children. And I’ll tell you my experience with the State Board of Education has been nothing but the worst case or example of partisan bickering and fighting, Republicans and Democrats alike.
All I hear is the Republicans want to push their religious views into the curriculum and the Democrats want to teach our children how to masturbate. (Laughter from the audience.) I even wondered how they do that, but that’s. . . . My point is, I believe that the SBOE, right, wrong, or indifferent, is expressing extreme political views in their deliberations, and I’m not sure that we’re serving the best interests of our children at this time.
Senator Seliger offers a completely logical alternative to that position, and whether or not these people are experts or not, I can tell you there are people on the SBOE who vilify public education as the work of the devil. And I wonder how they can have a sincere interest in advancing the education of our school-age children with an attitude that public education is an evil entity. So I believe that this represents a very logical and tangible alternative to what we currently have.
We certainly have to weigh the fact that these were elected folks. So maybe they, maybe we, have elected them for the wrong mission, and I think Senator Seliger’s alternative here is putting that part of the mission back to where educators have a significant say and professionals in the education field are engaged in the process of determining what our children are reading in their textbooks. So I applaud Senator Seliger for bringing this forward.
Archived video of today’s (April 14) committee hearing is available here. The committee took up SB 2275 shortly after the 40-minute mark.
