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Steve Driesler Testimony
Before Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee
September 24, 2003
Testimony of
Stephen D. Driesler
(Biography) (PDF)
Executive Director
Association of American Publishers, School Division
Testimony Before the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee
United States Senate
Hearing on Intellectual Diversity
September 24, 2003
Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee:
The Association of American Publishers' (AAP) School Division represents the principal trade association of the educational publishing industry for kindergarten through twelfth grade. AAP members publish over 85% of all the textbooks and other instructional materials including tests and assessments used in our nation's primary and secondary schools.
Thus, AAP has a great interest in the subject matter of this hearing and wishes to submit for the record the views of the educational publishing industry.
Let me start out with a riddle:
I am loved, I am loathed, I am immeasurably influential and controversial. I offer a road to success, yet not all respect me. I make a mistake, I make the headlines. I am a product of years of thoughtful planning and politicizing, but I occasionally find myself floating in a toilet bowel.
What am I? A textbook.
It is important for members of this Committee to understand that textbooks in public elementary and secondary schools in the United States are paid for by tax dollars and given to students free of charge. Because textbooks are purchased with public funds, the selection of which textbooks get purchased and used in our schools involves a lot of public scrutiny. Textbook selection often becomes a political battle, much like a legislative fight in which competing interests try to persuade public officials to their point of view.
It also must be remembered that in America, citizens have a First Amendment right to complain about textbooks. As Dr. Diane Ravitch points out in her book, The Language Police, "Battles over the political orientation of textbooks is nothing new in American educational history" (p.68).
Dr. Ravitch goes on to point out several times in her book that "the buying and selling of textbooks is more akin to a government procurement process than it is a real marketplace with consumer choices" (p.97).
Let me elaborate on this; textbooks are usually developed and produced to meet the requirements and specifications (often very specific and explicit) established by the customer. Said another way, textbooks are published to meet the demands of the school system that purchases them.
Dr. Ravitch addresses this situation in her book where she writes on page 97, "they (publishers) want to sell textbooks, and … they must respond to the demands of the marketplace. To succeed in this highly regulated and politicized environment, it is essential for educational publishers not to become embroiled in controversy."
She goes on to point out on page 98, "Publishers whose textbooks do not get adopted in one of these states sustain an economic blow…" Dr. Ravitch further explains the publisher's dilemma on page 104, "Publishers spend millions of dollars merely to prepare for a textbook adoption process. A rejection in the big states may be the death knell not only for a series but for the publisher as well…"
Literally, publishers often find themselves damned if they do or damned if they don't follow the guidelines set forth, not only by state or local Boards of Education, but guidelines established by national organizations like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association (NCITE-IRA), or the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Ravitch acknowledges the publisher's dilemma on page 71, "Textbook publishers were in an impossible situation. On the one hand, they were pressed on all sides to be studiously neutral by removing every point of view and every potential controversy from their books; on the other, fundamentalist parents complained that the textbooks' neutrality was a failure to take a stand on behalf of correct morality. The harder the textbook editors tried to make their product inclusive of all points of view without endorsing any, the more impossible it was to satisfy the Christian New Right and those who did not share its fundamentalist theology."
To give members of this Committee a better understanding of how detailed and specific bias and sensitivity guide lines imposed on the publishers by a state can be, I have attached the California "Standards for Evaluating Instructional Materials for Social Content." In her book The Language Police, Dr. Ravitch points out "California's standards send a clear signal to publishers about what is and is not acceptable in textbooks (and other instructional materials) adopted by the state" (pg. 107).
California is our nation's largest state and as such, it is also the single largest purchaser of textbooks. The economic reality for an educational publisher is, if they want to sell textbooks in California, they have to follow these guidelines.
California is not the only state with such guidelines, according to Dr. Ravitch, Over forty states "adhere to the NCTE-IRA standards" (pg. 124).
The economic reality on publishers to conform to these standards was recognized by Dr. Ravitch on page 85 when she writes, "no publisher could afford to enter a statewide adoption process with a textbook whose contents had been branded as racist or ageist or handicapist or biased against any other group."
In conclusion, publishers are accountable for aligning the textbooks they publish to a multitude of content standards established by state and local education agencies. Only instructional materials that conform to these standards will be purchased by these educational agencies. Most state and local school systems invite their citizens to review and comment on textbooks up for adoption.
AAP members are committed to producing the highest possible quality textbooks, tests and other instructional materials, within the parameters established by our customers.
AAP members would welcome any changes in the textbook selection process, which would increase the focus on the pedagogical quality of the materials themselves. But, we also believe these changes must originate in the local communities with parents, teachers and school officials determined to resist the politicizing of public education and textbook selection.
For more information contact:
Lydia Sutton
Ph: 202-220-4547
Email: lsutton@publishers.org