CALIFORNIA BOARD OF EDUCATION
FAILS TO CONSIDER
BAN
ON THOUSANDS OF FACTUAL ERRORS
IN TEXTBOOKS IN HANDS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN
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CARL OLSON Statement to State Board of Education On Petition for Regulation on Accuracy in Textbooks, March 12, 2008
Decades ago the Legislature commanded that the Board of Education ensure that all textbooks in California’s schools be factually accurate. That’s section 60200(c)(3) of the Education Code. The obvious purpose of the Legislature was to make education an honest pursuit of truth. Unfortunately, the Board has fallen flat on this important duty. So far you have not adopted any regulations whatsoever to implement accuracy in textbooks. The Department of Education has no position descriptions that include anything about factual accuracy. This neglect shows in the low factual quality of California’s textbooks. The textbooks that come out of the Department of Education’s Curriculum Committee are riddled with hundreds of factual errors, falsehoods, and contradictions. Nothing in the adoption process requires factual accuracy. The department has no fact checkers. To make things worse, the publishers know about this neglect. They apparently have neglected fact checkers. Textbook publishers are one of the few industries in this country that do not provide warranties on their products. You can see numerous examples in the attached petition and my website www.textbooktrust.org. The Board had one bright spot about a year ago. You directed the Oxford University Press to make a correction in a textbook concerning the Sikh Guru Nanak. This was an excellent remedy to require that all the erroneous textbooks in the state be corrected with a pasteover of the erroneous picture with a correct one. Board members Ruth Bloom and Ruth Green are to be congratulated on their diligence, along with the other members at the meeting. However, this one correction took an enormous lobbying effort by many people. You may be interested that the publisher never produced the pasteovers to be distributed to all the affected school districts. Superintendent Jack O’Connell announced his own policy when he was presented with a textbook which listed five academic reviewers who denied they had ever worked on the book. He said that upon confirmation all future printings of the book would need to be corrected, and notice would need to be given to all school districts using the textbooks so that corrections could be inserted. I applaud this policy decision by Superintendent O’Connell. This brings us to my petition for a regulation for accuracy in textbooks. It was submitted to the Board last November 26. Unfortunately, the Board has been ignoring and dodging the statutory requirement that the Board make a determination within 30 days of receipt. This does not set a good example to the public. Lawmakers should not be lawbreakers. My proposed regulation would be a very simple, very inexpensive way to handle factual errors. It would establish an office in the Department of Education to receive public complaints of factual errors of textbooks in use. For valid complaints, the publisher would be required to fix future editions and to provide errata sheets or pasteovers for insertion into all textbooks in use in the state. Following up on factual complaints should be very simple. It does not take much research to determine that the southern border of California is not the Rio Grande, that the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1798 and not 1898, and that Mono Lake is not out in the desert. The David and Lucille Packard Foundation study found 500 pages of errors for a Prentice Hall science textbook series. This is the study that found singer Linda Ronstadt labeled as a silicon crystal and showed the Equator running through the southern United States. We all know the many measures of low academic scores in California. Right now, millions of California schoolchildren are being positively mis-educated because of erroneous textbooks. It’s time you fixed things. Let me know how I and the rest of the public can help you adopt this very important regulation. After all, California is supposed to be the biggest and best education state. ___________________________________________________________________________ TEXT OF PETITION FOR RULE-MAKING
CARL OLSON
November 26, 2007
Mr. Kenneth
Noonan
Re: Petition
for Regulation Making Dear President Noonan: This is a petition for regulation making by the California State Board of Education. The Board has the power to adopt regulations, per Education Code sections 33031, 60005(b), 60206, and so on. Section 60200(c)(3) provides, “In reviewing and adopting or recommending for adoption submitted basic instructional materials, the state board shall use the following criteria, and ensure that, in its judgment, the submitted basic instructional materials meet all of the following criteria: … (3) Are factually accurate….” Section 60045(a) provides, “All instructional materials adopted by any governing board for use in the schools shall be, to the satisfaction of the governing board, accurate….” No regulation of the board implements these “accuracy” provisions. I am interested in the proposed regulation as an individual California citizen, as a college teacher, as a parent, and as an advocate of accurate instruction in all subjects. The proposed regulation would require the following: 1. Each publisher which offers to supply or does supply any instructional material for use by the state board or school districts shall provide a warranty on accuracy of the contents, and the state Department of Education shall establish an office to administer the warranty on accuracy. 2. For each instructional material which is acquired for use by the state board or a school district, a notice shall be included in each copy which (a) states the name, address, phone number, and website address of the office of the state Department of Education which administers the warranty on accuracy, and (b) invites the submission of complaints about any content of the instructional material which is suspected of being not accurate. 3. The office of the state Department of Education which administers the warranty on accuracy shall include on its website (a) the regulations and guidelines for submission and processing of complaints about accuracy, (b) a mechanism to submit a complaint via the website, (c) instructions on submitting a complaint by mail, (d) all complaints submitted, (e) all responses by publishers, (f) all comments made with regard to a particular complaint from anyone, (g) all determinations by the state Department of Education that each item in each complaint is “accurate” or “not accurate”, (h) the deadline for implementation of correction by the publisher, and (i) the confirmation of implementation of correction by the publisher. 4. Any person may submit a complaint about any content of any instructional material used by the state board or any school district which is suspected of being not accurate. Contents of the instructional material include, but are not limited to, text, charts, maps, graphics, illustrations, introductory statements, lists of reviewers, tables of contents, captions, indexes, glossaries, and references. 5. The office of the state Department of Education which administers the warranty on accuracy shall (a) receive and post on its website all complaints of content suspected of being not accurate, (b) establish a mechanism on its website for any requester to be notified of complaints by e-mail, (c) notify the publisher of the complaint within 5 calendar days after receipt of a complaint, (d) invite the public to comment on the complaint and provide a website and mail method for providing comments, (e) require that the publisher provide a response within 60 days of being noticed about the complaint, (f) consult with any appropriate subject specialist it deems necessary for each complaint, (g) within 5 days following the deadline for the publisher to provide its response, make a determination of “accurate” or “not accurate” for each complaint, (h) notify the affected publisher of each determination of “accurate” or “not accurate” and require that correction be made for “not accurate” determinations, (i) monitor the corrections for each complaint for which a determination of “not accurate” has been made, (j) notify all school districts in the state about all determinations of “not accurate”, (k) request that each school district report on corrections made by each publisher in the instructional materials owned by each school district. 6. A publisher for which a determination of “not accurate” has been made about any content of any instructional material shall, at its own expense, provide for all copies of the instructional material used by the state board and the school districts the appropriate corrections in the form of pasteover sheets, errata sheets, or other methods for insertion in the existing instructional materials. Such provision of corrections shall be made within one calendar year following the determination of “not accurate”. A publisher, at its own election, may aggregate for each particular instructional material all corrections for which determinations are made by the state Department of Education office administering the warranty on accuracy from July 1 of a year through June 30 of the next year such that all corrections can be made at the same time. 7. The state board and school districts shall be responsible for receiving the required corrections and inserting them in the relevant instructional material. 8. A publisher which fails to provide the require corrections in a timely manner shall become ineligible to sell any more instructional materials to the state board and school districts until such time as the corrections are provided. 9. Any person may submit a complaint to the state Department of Education administering the warranty on accuracy about any content of any instructional material which is proposed to be adopted or recommended by the state board which is suspected of being not accurate. Contents of the instructional material include, but are not limited to, text, charts, maps, graphics, illustrations, introductory statements, lists of reviewers, tables of contents, captions, indexes, glossaries, and references. 10. The office of the state Department of Education which administers the warranty on accuracy shall (a) receive and post on its website all complaints of content suspected of being not accurate in instructional materials being proposed for adoption or recommendation by the state board, (b) establish a mechanism on its website for any requester to be notified of complaints by e-mail, (c) notify the publisher of the complaint within 5 calendar days after receipt of the complaint, (d) invite the public to comment on the complaint and provide a website and mail method for providing comments, (e) require that the publisher provide a response within 30 days of being noticed about the complaint, (f) consult with any appropriate subject specialist it deems necessary for each complaint, (g) within 5 days following the deadline for the publisher to provide its response, make a determination of “accurate” or “not accurate” for each complaint, (h) notify the affected publisher of each determination of “accurate” or “not accurate”, and (i) inform the state Board of Education and the Curriculum Committee about each determination of “accurate” and “not accurate”. 11. All complaints, correspondence, notices, reports, determinations, comments, and other documents pursuant to this regulation shall be considered public documents. The need for the regulation is as follows: No regulation yet exists to implement the statutory requirement of accuracy in instructional materials. Instructional materials should be required to be 100% authoritative and accurate. The public school system has a goal of excellence in instruction and should be aimed at constantly improving the instructional materials being used. The existence of inaccuracies is a confession of defective instructional materials. A warranty on accuracy will provide an ongoing method of finding and correcting inaccuracies. The publishing industry does not currently warrant its product. Most other industries warrant their products as a matter of law or practice. The tolerance of publishers for numerous inaccuracies indicates an unacceptable attitude and calls into question the academic integrity of the rest of the contents. Thousands of factual errors exist in instructional materials in use in public schools in California. Millions of students in California are being mis-educated daily. A study of a 12-book Prentice Hall science series found 500 pages of errors. The errors include maps that show the Equator passing through the southern United States and a photo of the singer Linda Ronstadt labeled as a silicon crystal. The study was sponsored by the Lucille and David Packard Foundation. (See enclosed article from the New York Times, January 16, 2001.) The Houghton Mifflin history textbook Oh, California indicated that (a) the southern border of California is the Rio Grande, (b) the city of Lompoc is in the Central Valley (rather than on the Pacific Coast), and (c) Mono Lake is in the desert (rather than in the Sierras). (See enclosed copy.) The Holt, Rinehart and Winston textbook Earth Science stated in time lines (a) that the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1899 (rather than the real date of 1799 during Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt) and (b) that the extinction of the dodo bird in 16 was the first extinction of a species in recorded history. (See enclosed copy.) Every teacher can cite numerous examples of errors in his or her textbooks and other instructional materials. Unfortunately teachers, students, parents, administrators, staff, and the general public have had no method to correct any error in any textbook or other instructional material in use. The resulting sub-standard instruction has been perpetuated as the norm. Fortunately, the state Board of Education took up the correction of errors on its own. At its March 8, 2007, meeting, it took this unanimous action on Item 39: “Member Bloom moved to approve the request from Oxford University Press to remove the picture of Guru Nanak from page 95 of the SBE-adopted textbook An Age of Voyages, 1350-1600, in all future printings of this book. In addition, direct the publisher to alter the image in the already printed text by covering the image with a pasteover and recommend that the publisher place on the pasteover appropriate text (or appropriate image) developed by SBE staff and CDE staff in consultation with the publisher. Member Green seconded the motion. The motion was approved by a vote of 6-0.” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell put forth his positive correction policy in a letter dated May 11, 2005, to me, “Thank you for your letter regarding the potential inaccuracies in the authors and contributors list for the state-adopted Earth Science text published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. … If the publisher cannot provide such evidence, then the CDE will ask the publisher to remove those names from any subsequent printings of the text and to insert a statement noting the erroneous credits in all future sales of this text in California prior to such reprinting. Furthermore, we will ask the publisher to send this statement to all California districts that are currently using the Holt Earth Science program.” The proposed system is truly inexpensive and cost effective. It relies totally on a complaint system. The public will be a partner which provides valuable input without cost. The benefits will extend beyond improving the academic performance and knowledge of California students, inasmuch as California is seen as a national leader in educational policy. It will make a reality the goal of the pursuit of truth in our public schools. Please let me know the next step in the board’s consideration of this proposed regulation.
Sincerely,
Carl Olson
Enclosures: New York Times article “Science Texts Contain Errors, Study Finds”, January 16, 2001 Excerpts from Oh, California by Houghton Mifflin Excerpts from Earth Science by Holt, Rinehart and Winston Board of Education minutes of meeting Item 39, March 8, 2007 State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell letter of May 11, 2005, to Carl Olson Cc: Office of Administrative Law
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