Critics question accuracy of new conservative-leaning social studies textbooks up for adoption in Texas

Four years after State Board of Education members clashed over U.S. history standards for Texas schools, publishers are facing criticism from multiple groups over new textbooks and e-books based on those standards.

The Texas Freedom Network, an education advocacy and watchdog group, fired the first warning shot on Tuesday by challenging several of the books under consideration this year for U.S.history, world history,U.S.government and other social studies courses.

The criticism came a week before board members are scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposed materials. The board will then approve new textbooks and electronic books in November, with distribution to schools in the fall of 2015.

“Extensive reviews of these textbooks show that they suffer from many of the same serious flaws that plague the state’s controversial curriculum standards for social studies the SBOE approved in 2010,” the freedom network said in a report released Tuesday.

Among the experts who reviewed the books for the group were SMU history professor Edward Countryman,University of Mary Washington political science professor Emile Lester and seven doctoral students in the history department at UT-Austin.

The reviewers laid out numerous errors and shortcomings in the books, such as political cartoons that make fun of affirmative action programs and present “ideologically slanted” views on government and social security taxes...