In Part I of a three-day series of articles here Bill Ames today reveals how various left-leaning groups in Texas might have come together to hijack the social studies review process in order to promote their agenda of indoctrinating Texas public school students with a negative politically biased view of America.
Have Liberal Activists Hijacked Texas Social Studies Curriculum Process?
By Bill Ames
During 2009 the 16 social studies review panels met three times: In February July and October. Overall of some 100 members all but four were educators". In my group of 9 I was the only non-educator and the only member who consistently supported conservative principles.
I objected in vain as the leftists first hijacked the standards process by using a bootlegged version of standards created by the left-leaning Texas Council for Social Studies (TCSS) as the starting point for revision and update. This action clearly violated the direction of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) which required that the existing TEKS standards be the starting point. (TEKS stands for the Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills curriculum framework.)
Outvoted 8 to 1 on nearly every standards issue I watched the standards go from bad to worse over the months of the project. We will deal with specifics of major standards flaws in part II of this article.
Today we will examine facts behind the review process itself and let the reader begin to answer questions regarding why the process went awry.
The Texas Education Code (TEC) requires that review panel members be drawn from a cross section of Texans. Specifically TEC 28.002(c) specifies:
The State Board of Education with the direct participation of educators parents business and industry representatives and employers shall by rule identify the essential knowledge and skills of each subject of the required curriculum ... "
This requirement begs the following questions as well as some relevant facts I will lay out immediately after:
How and to whom did Texas Education Agency (TEA) send requests for participants in the review panel process?"
Were the requests primarily directed to the TCSS and the teachers unions?"
Were organizations outside of the education establishment contacted for example any Texas Chambers of Commerce and/or major industry employers?"
Did the TCSS and teachers unions recruit educators sympathetic to their agenda or were they representative of the hard-working Social Studies teachers group as a whole?"
Were the resulting volunteer resumes distributed to liberal SBOE members giving them a large selection of candidates while the conservative SBOE members were left to find candidates for themselves?"
How were the liberal SBOE members able to get as many as 16 or 17 educators on the review panels while conservatives got a just handful at most or sometimes none?"
Why were the 16 social studies panels (including my U. S. history since 1877 panel) comprised of roughly 100 educators mostly leftists but only four representatives from the non-educator categories?"
Given the overwhelming imbalance of educators why did the TEA staff nevertheless reject known-to-be-conservative non-educator nominees from conservative SBOE members? By what authority did they do so?"
Why did the TEA staff overseers allow the use of bootlegged TCSS standards as a starting point for the review process?"
Lets develop the scenarios that help begin to answer these questions. The review panel meetings are open to the public. On Thursday October 15 during the final review panel meeting I noticed two observers in the room whom I could not identify. Introducing myself I learned that one observer was Ryan Valentine who is listed as Deputy Director of the left wing anti-Christian Texas Freedom Network (TFN) an organization which as much as anything engages in the politics of personal destruction against any conservatives who disagree with its leftist agenda. (They describe themselves as an organization which advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the radical right.") Although observers are instructed to not become involved in the meeting during a break I observed Mr. Valentine reviewing input from SBOE member Don
McLeroy. Sure enough a few days later yet another TFN article as usual emphasizing personal attacks rather than rational adult debate appeared on the TFN website under the Ryan" byline.
The second observer obviously chummy with Mr. Valentine was one Sharon Pope. Ms. Pope is the former president of the Texas Council for Social Studies a liberal educators group whose members make up something less than 20 of Texas social studies teachers.
Ms. Pope is currently listed as editor of The Texan the newsletter of the TCSS and is therefore a mover and shaker within her organization. It was the TCSS that had attempted to hijack the standards review process. Only a sharp rebuke from the SBOE Committee on Instruction on April 22 slowed them down.
The team of Valentine and Pope as observers got me wondering about relationships among the various left-leaning groups. A little detective work led me to a donor list published in the fall 2008 version of the TFN newsletter which revealed the answer. Ms. Pope is listed on the Freedom Fighters" list a group of social activists who make monthly gifts to help sustain the work of TFN".
Further Texas two major teachers unions are also listed as donors members of the Texas Freedom Council" an elite group of major TFN contributors.
One is the Texas State Teachers Association the Texas affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA) headquartered in Washington D.C. with its national membership of 3.2 million.
The NEA more a shill for liberal Democrats than an education organization supports positions that are totally alien to Texas overwhelming majority of 
conservative citizens including endless funding increases for public schools support for abortion and homosexual marriage anything-goes sex education big government confiscatory taxes and government welfare and dependency.
The other union is the Texas Federation of Teachers the Texas State Affiliate of the 1.3 million-member American Federation of Teachers representing more than 57000 members statewide.
So is it a valid conclusion that TCSS leaders and the states teachers unions are ideologically joined at the hip providing financial support to TFN bloggers who conduct smear campaigns against conservative SBOE members conservative expert reviewers and any others who oppose their agenda to promote a politically biased negative view of American history?
I then also learned that the TEAs (Texas Education Agency) Director of Social Studies a position of authority in overseeing this process is like Ms. Pope a past president of the TCSS.
SBOE liberals got as many as 17 of their nominees selected for the review panels while SBOE conservatives got few or none.
Curiously a number of my fellow panelists-nominees members of my review panel admitted they were in the dark about how they got nominated. They were not aware of who on the SBOE had nominated them or even how their names had been put on any list for consideration.
I suspect that I know how they got there. Their comments during discussions over the months exposed their ideological beliefs.
One member commented We do not teach values in public schools". She also suggested adding investment swindler Bernie Madoff to a list of business leaders 
who had achieved the American Dream an obvious attempt to undermine free enterprise and the American Dream concept.
Further she suggested adding the name of self-proclaimed pedophile Harvey Milk of San Francisco to a list of contemporary figures.
Another member said that under the right set of circumstances he would Send his students out to participate in violent protests". The two fit the ideology of the groups who likely recruited them perfectly.
These facts that review panel members were not aware of who nominated them suggests a total disconnect between the recruitment of nominees by the TCSS and/or the unions and the submission of the resulting names by SBOE liberals to the TEA for rubber stamp approval.
Given the facts outlined above lets take another look at the questions posed earlier in the article:
How and to whom did Texas Education Agency (TEA) send requests for participants in the review panel process?"
Were the requests primarily directed to the TCSS and the teachers unions?"
Were organizations outside of the education establishment contacted for example any Texas Chambers of Commerce and/or major industry employers?"
Did the TCSS and teachers unions recruit educators sympathetic to their agenda or were they representative of the hard-working Social Studies teachers group as a whole?"
Were the resulting volunteer resumes distributed to liberal SBOE members giving them a large selection of candidates while the conservative SBOE members were left to find candidates for themselves?"
How were the liberal SBOE members able to get as many as 16 or 17 educators on the review panels while conservatives got a just handful at most or sometimes none?"
Why were the 16 social studies panels (including my U. S. history since 1877 panel) comprised of roughly 100 educators mostly leftists but only four representatives from the non-educator categories?"
Given the overwhelming imbalance of educators why did the TEA staff nevertheless reject known-to-be-conservative non-educator nominees from conservative SBOE members? By what authority did they do so?"
Why did the TEA staff overseers allow the use of bootlegged TCSS standards as a starting point for the review process?"
These review process questions all need to be answered eventually thru an SBOE investigation. But for now mainstream Texans need to focus on supporting those who will be fixing the standards between now and their acceptance in March 2010. In summary the ideological political and even some financial links among TFN-TCSS-teachers unions-TEA staff-review panels-and SBOE liberals seem unmistakable. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to develop probable answers to the questions posed in this article. And it is almost amusing that Texas Freedom Network" the self-described keepers of a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the radical right" and the bottom-feeding newspapers that use TFN input for their biased articles accuse the right" of politicizing" American history? Excuse me? The politicizing is coming from these left-leaning history-rewriting groups that attempt to invent negative revisionist history while conducting aggressive smear campaigns and personal attacks on any Texas conservative whose views of a positive America or Texas stands in their way. The time has come to shine the bright light of truth on the real story … the lefts hijacking of the social studies standards process. Tomorrows Part II" article will address what damage has been done to the standards as a result of this one-sided ideological attack? _________________________________________ During 2009 Bill Ames has been the only non-educator as well as he says the only conservative on a nine member TEKS review panel charged with the responsibility to determine teaching standards for post 1877 U. S. history in Texas public schools for the next ten years approximately. In a three part series published in TexasInsider during September (Part I Part II and Part III) Ames revealed how the nine member TEKS review panel he serves on has chosen to:- Present a negative view of U.S. history thru a prism emphasizing exploitation and oppression of minorities women and labor;
- Set a double standard for inclusion of minorities and women; and
- Introduce shameless political bias into the standards.
