AUSTIN, Texas _ The State Board of Education has voted to keep Hillary Clinton, Helen Keller and several other historical figures in the Texas social studies curriculum.
The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS, are baseline curriculum standards public school teachers use to create lesson plans and prepare for testing. After meeting Tuesday and Wednesday, the 15-member state board made several changes to the TEKS for social studies as part of an effort to "streamline" the curriculum.
Clinton, Keller and several other historical figures on the chopping block were ultimately kept in the history standards, as was the biblical figure Moses, who is currently in the U.S. government curriculum. Many others, meanwhile, were cut and several teaching requirements amended, including standards relating to the Civil War and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The board took a preliminary vote to approve these changes Wednesday afternoon, and will take a final vote on the entire curriculum Friday. At this time, this streamlined curriculum would go into effect in the 2019 school year.
The board undertook this curriculum streamlining effort to save teachers time and provide them more flexibility in the classroom. Students are resorting to rote memorization instead of real learning, the board said, and one way to tackle this would be to cut down on what they're required to learn.
To do this, volunteer working groups were convened to find places to cut and tweak the curriculum. They designed a rubric to grade each of the people included in the kindergarten through high school social studies curriculum, scored each using these metrics and recommended those with low scores for deletion. The board then took up these suggested changes in September, voting to eliminate Clinton, Keller and dozens of other historical figures.
Since then, the story has gone viral, with the majority-Republican board accused of allowing its politics to influence what kids are taught in classrooms.
On Tuesday evening, the board discussed that backlash. State board member Erika Beltran made the suggestion to keep Clinton in the high school U.S. history curriculum, where she's suggested to be taught as one of several "significant political and social leaders" of the modern era.
"I got a ton of calls and emails about the removal of Hillary Clinton," said Beltran, D-Fort Worth. "She was the first female presidential nominee from a major U.S. political party. So regardless of our party affiliations, I think she is an important figure to keep."
Marty Rowley, R-Amarillo, disagrees with Clinton's politics but said he would vote to keep her in the curriculum: "I have to give credit where credit is due. She is a significant political leader."
The board voted 12-2 to keep Clinton with Republicans Pat Hardy of Fort Worth and Geraldine "Tincy" Miller of Dallas voting for elimination. Chair Donna Bahorich, R-Houston, abstained from the vote on Clinton as she did for most of the votes Tuesday.
Hardy said she voted to axe Clinton because "she doesn't represent good citizenship."
"I just do not respect the woman," Hardy added. "As far as I'm concerned, she's done a lot of detrimental things to our country."
Miller agreed, saying the death of U.S. diplomats in Libya when Clinton was secretary of state was the deciding factor for her: "The Benghazi thing kind of did it for me."
In addition to Clinton, the board voted to reinsert several other figures the working groups recommended for deletion, including Revolutionary War figure Wentworth Cheswell and surveyor Benjamin Banneker.
Dozens of other historical figures, artists, celebrities and business people were cut.
"Star-Spangled Banner" author Francis Scott Key was eliminated from first grade and Phillis Wheatley, the first published African-American female poet, from third grade. These two historical figures were recommended, but not required, to be used as examples of artistic ability and entrepreneurship, respectively. The board also axed several Confederate leaders, including John Reagan, Francis Lubbock and John Bell Hood, all suggested to be taught in seventh grade.
The board heard testimony from members of the public earlier Tuesday. Many urged the board to keep Keller and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, the first American women to fly military aircraft.
"Helen Keller is the only point of reference for deaf-blindness because it is unlikely an educator, a government worker, a doctor would have any other interaction with any other person who was deaf-blind," Robbie Caldwell, who lives in Austin, told the board during public testimony. "We need Helen Keller to remain in our Texas curriculum."
Caldwell's daughter Gabrielle, 17, who is deaf-blind and attends the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, also spoke to the board.
"I am hoping that you keep Helen Keller being taught in our schools. She traveled the world, worked very hard and helped a lot of people. She is a hero," Gabrielle Caldwell said, clutching her cane in one hand and her written testimony in the other. "I like to travel and want to travel the world. I study hard, too. I believe I can do these things because Helen Keller did them."
Several people also testified to oppose the removal of the WASP from a second grade lesson on Americans who have exemplified good citizenship. Erin Miller, who fought to have her grandmother inurned alongside her military brethren at Arlington National Cemetery, said these women can be inspirations to other women as they were for her.
"I flew 1,500 miles from Maryland just to talk to you," Miller said. "I am here today because of the citizenship example by grandmother and the WASP set for me."
Austin resident Tom Lucas, whose mother Dorothy A. Smith was a WASP, added: "They were the original 'me too' movement. ... I cannot think of a group more worthy to put forth as a definition of citizenship."
Later Tuesday, the board voted unanimously to keep the WASP in the curriculum. Keller was also reinserted, with Beaumont Republican David Bradley voting in opposition due to her writings on eugenics.
The board also debated dozens of other changes to the social studies curriculum, including how to discuss the Civil War. For the first time, the board voted to describe slavery as playing a "central role" in causing the war. It was previously listed one of several causes.
But the board shot down an attempt to remove "states' rights" as one of the contributing causes for the Civil War. As is often the case in these debates, the board again split along party lines, with five Democrats voting for removal and nine Republicans voting against.
During the vote, Bradley declared, "I believe in states' rights."
Later Tuesday, the board also voted to tweak how it refers to the Arab-Israeli conflict in the high school world history curriculum.
It replaced its standard asking students to "explain how Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict," with a requirement they instead "discuss factors contributing to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the rejection of the existence of the state of Israel by the Arab League and a majority of Arab nations."
Finally, on Wednesday, the board shot down an attempt to cut Moses from a high school U.S. government standard that describes him as an "individual whose principles of laws and government institutions informed the American founding documents."
Fort Worth's Beltran made the motion, which was backed by all five of the board's Democrats.
"This particular individual, we have no evidence that he actually influenced the Founding Fathers," Beltran said, to which Bradley replied, "I'm going to go ahead and err on the side of caution. I'd rather disagree with you than Moses."
Other changes the board approved this week include:
_Cutting Ellen Ochoa and Juliette Gordon Low as suggested "heroes" in section on "the role of heroes in shaping the culture of communities, the state, and the nation. (Grade 3)
_Cutting Phillis Wheatley as a suggestion in a section on "the importance of writers and artists to the cultural heritage of communities." (Grade 3)
_Reinserting (keeping) requirement that student "describe how religion and virtue contributed to the growth of representative government in the American colonies." (Grade 8)
_Amending references to "radical Islamic fundamentalism" to "Islamic extremism." (high school world history)
_Cutting Eleanor Roosevelt as a required teaching in "the contributions of women" from a section on "how people from various groups contribute to our national identity." (high school U.S. history since 1877)
_Adding the following teaching requirement to a discussion of the civil rights movement: "Explain how Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan created obstacles to civil rights for minorities such as the suppression of voting." (high school U.S. history since 1877)
These changes will not result in an immediate change to Texas textbooks, which are not up for revision this year, but will affect what teachers must teach in the classroom under state law. At its Friday meeting, the board will have the opportunity to make additional changes to any of these curriculum standards before it takes its final vote.
