SBOE APUSH Update: Whats Next for Advanced Placement U.S. History in Texas?

APUSHs radical social justice critique of American history. By Bill Ames AUSTIN Texas (Texas Insider Report) During its September meeting the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) took two distinctive actions to protect Texas students from controversial curriculum created by national and international course developers. On Wednesday September 17th the Board passed an amendment requiring all Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses to comply with the Texas Essential Knowledge & Skills (TEKS) standards.   The SBOE passed amendment to the Texas Education Code resulted from SBOE members and citizens concern that the new Advanced Placement U. S. history (APUSH) framework developed by the unaccountable national curriculum creators of the College Board organization presents an overwhelmingly negative version of our history. The difference between APUSH and the Texas TEKS standard has been described by veteran AP history expert Larry Krieger as oil & water. The TEKS reflect acquisition of historical facts the APUSH is a radical social justice critique of American history. On Friday September 19th the SBOE went even further passing member Ken Mercers resolution to condemn the APUSH framework thereby sending a message to the College Board and its framework authors. Since the Mercer (left) resolution is non-binding the question becomes: What next? First a few comments to put the APUSH framework in context. The emergence of the new APUSH represents a much larger issue than just the APUSH course content. Earlier this month Denish DSouza the producer of the documentary America was asked on national television…

Are todays far left educators unusual examples of academia or are they the norm in academic circles?"

DSouza answered:

I think were seeing a real shift in American politics and most people are not even aware of it. If you go back for example to the Truman administration or FDR it didnt matter if you were Republican or Democrat America is a force for good in the world.   So there was a pro-American consensus.  And what we repeatedly see now is that the consensus has broken down. The left that has emerged out of the sixties and out of the Vietnam War sees America in bitter hostile terms.  They see America as the evil empire.  And they see it as their moral obligation to undermine America and they are doing that. The left has become extremely powerful in the media in academia and in Hollywood. And its moving into the elementary and secondary schools. And has been for 30 years."

One egregious example: In the early 1990s the National Council for Social Studies released its new United States history standards. The NCSS standard focused on Native- and African-American history while de-emphasizing European influence. These standards were rejected by none other than the United States Senate both Democrats and Republicans by a vote of 99 to 1. The Senates condemnation concluded with the words Any recipient of federal funds … for standards and curriculum development … should have a decent respect for United States historys roots in western civilization." In Texas I have personally seen the lefts movement into our elementary and secondary schools during my years of education activism.

• Read more by Bill Ames:
  • AMES: Texas Trounces the Lefts War on History
  • CSCOPE The Obamacare of Texas Public Education
  • A Series on CSCOPE Part 3: Common Core Project Based Learning Damages Texas Students

In 2002 the McGraw-Hill textbook I reviewed portrayed the D-Day invasion as a military disaster. That was only one of approximately 200 concerns I identified in the book.  In total some 100 changes were negotiated to address the books bias. In 2009 leftist members of my U. S. history review panel created an unacceptably negative proposal to the SBOE for the U. S. history TEKS. A package of over 50 amendments reviewed and adopted by the SBOE was required to bring the proposal into balance. Two of those amendments were the concept of American Exceptionalism and the inclusion of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Last year the CSCOPE fiasco indoctrinated Texas students that the Boston Tea Party patriots were terrorists. In spite of such non-compliance with the TEKS nearly 900 school districts in Texas utilize this curriculum today. And now along comes APUSH whose only mention of World War II is that Japanese internment and use of the atomic bomb raises questions about American values.

From this we can conclude that APUSH is just one more incremental step in the lefts long term agenda to indoctrinate Texas high school students with its contempt for America.

So where do we go from here? The College Board has committed that by September 30 it will respond to the Texas SBOE with clarification of the course framework. Further during the period October 1 through November 30 the College Board website will be open for public comment and feedback. Mainstream Texans should comment on this website thus helping to neutralize the expected emotional howling of hundreds recruited leftists who like lemmings will blindly support APUSH. What is the probable College Board response? A review of the ideological mindsets of some of the original APUSH framework influencers raises serious concerns about any willingness to turn around their original negative work. APUSH critic Stanley Kurtz profiled key APUSH contributors in his National Review online article August 25 2014.

Thomas Bender (New York University) ... Bender is a thoroughgoing critic of American Exceptionalism … he is the leading spokesman for the movement to internationalize U. S. history curriculum at every educational level ... Francesca Lopez Civeira (University of Havana) ... American power is an object of fear … urges American students be exposed to evidence of the controversial power and presence of the United States beyond our borders… Suzanne Sinke (Florida State University) … Downplayed the desire of immigrants to find a better life in America ... referred to immigrants as migrants ... Penny Von Eschen (University of Michigan) … Relentlessly critical of Americas cultural imperialism" and its economic and military presence in the world … 

The profiles of this group along with others involved in the original anti-American framework do not build confidence that the College Board will turn on a dime and create an acceptable framework for Texas use. One cannot create a silk purse from a sows ear. Rather the College Board may well come back with some mostly cosmetic changes and negotiate for acceptance by the SBOE. Their strategy will be to continue implementation of its agenda in future curriculum cycles. The left never gives up. There are two important questions that need to be answered. First: Why did the College Board allow such an anti-American negative framework to be created and implemented in the first place? The answer lies in demographics. One cannot miss the fact that the key influencers of the APUSH framework are college professors. And what of the college professor community? A 2010-2011 survey of 23824 full-time faculty members at 417 American colleges and universities conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA reveals that over 65 of professors in public and private universities self-identify as liberal or far left.  Less that 10 identify as  conservative or far right. The negative tone of the APUSH framework convinces me that the College Board APUSH creators are fully part of this overwhelming majority. Only the bias of liberal college professors allows creation of an APUSH framework that promotes such a negative portrayal of our countrys basic values. A second question is also interesting. We have seen the overwhelming liberalism of college professors.  But in Texas a 2009 Gallup poll revealed that 43 of Texans are conservative only 16 claim to be liberal. The extreme polarized separation of college professors and Texas citizens begs the puzzling second question: Why do we allow a group so ideologically separated from Texas citizens to have control over what we teach our kids? I have worked with five school districts to counter APUSH in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. It is stunning that in all five districts the elected school board was not consulted about the implementation of the controversial APUSH curriculum.  Not until citizen activists got involved did the school boards become aware.  So much for the much ballyhooed need for local control". Texas conservative mainstream has defaulted public education curriculum decisions to public school superintendents administrators and their liberal allies. If we do not fix this the approximately 300000 kids that Texas public schools graduate into our society year after year will be indoctrinated with the lefts contempt for America. Their agenda will succeed and Texas conservative demographic will forever change. 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. In 2013 he reviewed CSCOPE U. S. history lessons as part of the State Board of Educations Ad Hoc Committee Project and is now involved with the new College Board AP U.S. history framework . He welcomes reader comments at billames@prodigy.net.