American Film Institute’s Silver Docs Festival and begin with “The Revisionaries,” a new film on the Texas textbook battle from director Scott Thurman. Texas teachers, we want to hear from you. How do you teach evolution in your classroom? 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Vijay Dewan is executive producer of “The Revisionaries” and joins us from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you with us today.
VIJAY DEWAN: Thanks for having me.
CONAN: And why is this a big deal outside of Texas?
DEWAN: Well, Texas has a very large influence on the rest of the nation. Texas is one of the largest states that decides its curriculum on a statewide level and purchases textbooks on a statewide level. So publishers actually publish their books to the Texas mandates. And Texas buys 110 percent of the enrollment right out of the chute so textbook manufacturers can recoup their investment right off the bat and end up selling those books in other markets.
CONAN: And how does that the process work? The school board doesn’t write the textbooks.
DEWAN: No. The board actually has experts that first write a draft of the standards, and the elected state Board of Education then revises those standards. And the publishers then need to write textbooks that meet the standards that were - are passed by the Board of Education.
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/20/155440679/revisionaries-tells-story-of-texas-textbook-battle
But the textbooks are not the only books they use, and much of the material has nothing to do with the SBOE. There was a recent controversy where a lot of Texas schools got together and started making their own materials and curriculum with no SBOE oversight at all.
The state lawmakers apparently corrected that, but I’m not so sure.