Bill Gives Contempt-for-America educators" 2nd chance to hijack U.S. History revisionists chance shred academic standards
By Bill Ames
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas On May 21 the Senate Education Committee conducted a hearing on State Rep. Ken Kings House Bill 2811. HB 2811
narrows the scope of Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills (TEKS) and
redirects instructional 
material allotment funding from
the Texas State Board of Educations (SBOE) Permanent School Fund to individual school districts.
A companion bill SB 313 by Senator Kel Seliger has already passed the Senate.
HB 2811 and SB 313 are bad bills. The following explains why.
During 2009-2010 the Texas State Board of Education had the responsibility to review and revise state standards (TEKS Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills) for the social studies curriculum.
Some 17 review panels were created one for each of the social studies course. I became a review panel member for the 11th grade U. S history course.
I was the only conservative the only non-educator on the panel in spite of the Texas Education Code requirement that the panels consist of a mix of parents educators business and industry representatives and employers.
I quickly determined that the other eight panel members varied ideologically from left of center to having outright contempt for America.
Our deliberations during 2009 reflected the bias. I was outvoted 8 to 1 on nearly every issue and in September 2009 the review panel submitted a standards proposal to the SBOE that in my view was clearly
unacceptable.
Across the social studies spectrum of 17 courses review panel experts" had deleted Veterans Day Independence Day the Liberty Bell Christmas and Rosh Hashanah. These experts" also deleted any mention of American Free Enterprise while repeatedly emphasizing their agenda of global rather than American citizenship.
In 11th grade U. S. history my review panel rejected American Exceptionalism rejected study of the Declaration of Independence Constitution and Bill of Rights characterized the United States as imperialistic rejected the concept of achieving the American Dream and in general painted the United States as an exploitative oppressive racist and imperialistic country.
In the words of SBOE member Ken Mercer These were real documented attempts of political revisionism by radical academics that are now a matter of public record".
During November 2009 appalled by the proposal document the review panel had produced I created a document consisting of over 50 amendments to bring my review panels bias into balance and during SBOE meetings in January March and May of 2010 many if not most of these amendments were adopted by a Board that fortunately rejected the review panels negative view of our history.
How does this relate to Rep. Kings HB 2811?
HB 2811 has little to do with narrowing the scope" of existing TEKS. Rather It is a thinly-veiled attempt to give certain SBOE members Democrats and liberal-leaning Republicans a chance to partner with leftist teachers unions and the contempt-for-America experts" for yet another attempt to incorporate their agenda.
Social Studies are not the only target. The revisionists are after other core academics as well. In math students will no longer memorize multiplication tables. Any adult for whom 8×7=56 is not a knee-jerk reaction is at an educational disadvantage. In English cursive writing will no longer be taught. In science the
mythical religion of global warming (now renamed climate change since the planet hasnt warmed for 17 years) will be taught as absolute fact.
Further HB 2811 re-allocates authority over education materials acquisition passing much of the responsibility and funding from the SBOE to school districts.
The SBOE materials approval process with the participation of hundreds of Texas citizens has always included extensive vetting of proposed materials.
Conversely most school districts do not have the resource nor the ideological neutrality to adequately assess appropriate education materials.
A real-life example......I live in the Richardson (TX) school district (RISD). The last time I looked EVERY online instruction package available from RISD headquarters for school use openly advertised itself as common core compliant" in spite of the Texas state ban on common core. In addition many elementary school kids in the district are given weekly access to Time Magazines leftist Time for Kids" a publication that openly flaunts its common core compliance and dishonestly indoctrinates kids to support biased issues such as banning fossil fuels.
Further in a recent RISD textbook selection project RISD administration staff recommended three social studies textbooks that had been rated unacceptable" by the apolitical Truth in Texas Textbooks (TTT) organization of over 100 citizen volunteer reviewers. Both the RISD administration and the RISD board were made aware of the TTT recommendations. Nevertheless a complicit administration recommended the books and a capitulant Board unanimously approved the recommendation without a single question or comment.
Texas House members hundreds of Texas citizens along with unbiased members of the then-SBOE worked hard and long to diffuse the lefts attempt to hijack U. S. history and other core academics as well (math science reading and writing).
Do to not give the leftists a second chance to incorporate their revisionism into the standards.
Vote no on HB 2811.
Bill Ames is an education activist who lives in Dallas. His book TEXAS TROUNCES THE LEFTS WAR ON HISTORY" (WNAenterprises.com) tells the story of his experience in developing Texas U. S. history standard in 2009-2010.
A
mes reviewed CSCOPE lessons as part of the State Board of Educations Ad Hoc Committee Project. His work in his local school district resulted in Board reviews of both its social studies curriculum and project based learning implementation as well as securing a superintendent commitment to modify the AP history course to be Texas standards (TEKS) compliant. He welcomes reader comments at billames@prodigy.net
