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Textbooks and Curricula

Educating Our Children > Textbooks and Curricula
The SBOE must have sole authority over textbook content and state adoption, and this process must include public hearings. We urge the Legislature to give the State Board of Education authority to establish textbook adoption standards. We oppose the replacement of textbooks by laptops. We support competitive pricing as part of the textbook selection process by independent school districts and oppose standard maximum pricing schemes.
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Textbook content adoption must have checks and balances. Otherwise textbook standards will entirely be created by an unelected committee.

The anti-technology provision is silly and contradicts other parts of the platform that affirm technology.

Furthermore, by limiting textbook authority to the SBOE, this plank contradicts other planks that call for local control.

Let's be frank about what this is about: some see the SBOE as the best hope for replacing science with religious doctrine or presenting a politically-biased, revisionist view of history. They keep trying but always fail.

Textbook pricing problems can be greatly alleviated by eliminating Texas's unusual, centralized control of textbook adoption and purchasing. Let the free market work, let local control work, let local districts purchase their textbooks like the rest of the nation. Fortunately that has already started.

Fault:

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