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Proposal Would Halt the State's Latest School Textbook Order

Posted on: Wednesday, 10 May 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Katherine Cromer Brock, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

May 10--AUSTIN -- Elementary math teachers have waited almost a decade for updated textbooks.

They may have to continue to wait if proposed legislation passes that would halt the state's current method of ordering and purchasing textbooks.

An amendment to House Bill 1 by state Sen. Florence Shapiro, the chairwoman of the Senate Public Education Committee, halts the State Board of Education's latest textbook order. The Legislature will discuss potential changes to the process during its regular session, which convenes in January 2007.

"This will be a devastating blow to math education in our state and the orderly delivery of textbooks to our school children," said Cliff Avery, executive director of the Textbook Coordinators' Association of Texas, in a prepared statement.

House Bill 1 is part of a package of legislation that would overhaul the state's property and business taxes. Proposals that would impact public schools are also included in the bill. It was pending Tuesday night in the Texas Senate, where GOP members remained divided on how to allocate about $1.5 billion in education funding.

When the state board orders new textbooks, it issues a proclamation that includes which books are to be purchased. Two years later, the purchase is approved by the Legislature, and the new books are delivered the following fall.

In 2004, the state board ordered textbooks for secondary-level math, International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement and sixth-grade science. Those books will be delivered in the fall of 2007.

But the proclamation of 2005, issued in November, could be delayed at least six to eight months because of HB1, said DeEtta Culbertson, spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency. That order includes kindergarten materials and elementary-level math books in English and Spanish. Those books were scheduled to be distributed in 2008.

"Math educators across the state are already struggling to meet the demands for improvement in test scores," Avery said. "Denying them the materials they need to teach our students will only make Texas fall further behind the rest of the nation in the critical areas of math and science."

Texas is already struggling to keep up in elementary math, said Pat Hardy, who represents Parker, Johnson, Ellis and Tarrant counties on the state board. Elementary math books have never been aligned to the state's curriculum or to what is on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, the state's high-stakes accountability tests. This order of books was supposed to include material that parallels what students will be asked on the test, which they must pass to move from fifth to sixth grade.

Hardy said she is concerned that this proposal is a technique for the Legislature to usurp some of the state board's power while making a move toward phasing out textbooks in exchange for laptop computers and other electronic instructional materials.

In last year's special session, Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, authored a bill that would have changed the word "textbook" to "instructional materials," which the bill defined as "a medium or combination of media for conveying information to a student." That definition would have included laptop computers.

Texas currently has close to $23 billion in the Permanent School Fund, which the state board uses to pay for textbooks. Adding laptops to the order of instructional materials could deplete that fund.

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Katherine Cromer Brock, (817) 685-3813 kcromer@star-telegram.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

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Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)

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