About That Textbook Commission

Our Governor almost has more Democrats working for him these days than Bev Perdue did.

I’ve already pointed out his Democrat education advisers, now I’m talking about the textbook commission.

It is important to note that these appointments come by the recommendation of the NC State Superintendent — June Atkinson.

The chairman of this commission is subject to her approval.

Reminder: Dr. Atkinson is President-elect of the CCSSO; one of the two D.C. trade groups who hold the copyright on the Common Core standards.

Out of a total of 22 appointments, the Governor has increased the number of Democrats in place that his predecessor had to 12. He kept most of the prior commission members in place, however, this commission is one person less than the 2010-2014 commission.

Dr. Terry Stoops at John Locke had the count at 4 Republican, 11 Democrat, 3 Unaffiliated and 4 no party information available. I have a different count of 6 Republican, 12 Democrat, 3 unaffiliated and 1 with no party information available. A side-by-side comparison of the two commissions can be viewed here.

The discrepancy may be because it would seem the same people serving on the 2010-14 commission have shifted the county listed by their name in the Governor’s press release. I’ve captured both and using the NC Board of Elections voter lookup tool, was able to track down a few of those missing party affiliation.

It is important to note that in the new additions we now have Rodney Trice, the Director of Wake County’s “Equity Affairs” office.

Other changes include the loss of Sanguine (R), Cox (U), Pearce (R). Additions include Novey (U) and Trice (D).

A word to parents

You will not easily find a list of textbooks or a reading list for North Carolina. Your searches of DPI or Google will not bring up what you are looking for.

You need to search under Text Exemplars.

*Update 7/22: The links to Text Exemplars originally posted in this article now direct to a “404 page missing” webpage. The only Text Exemplars I’ve been able to locate this morning are ONLY Common Core and on the live binder site.

Here is the raw link: http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_B.pdf

I’ve tweeted to NC Public Schools and asked where the link went.

Here is an excerpt where I wrote about discovering the textbook list while writing about Becky Gerritson Testifying before the Common Core Hearing at the State House this past March:

The Bluest Eye was also mentioned at the NC General Assembly’s Common Core LRC meeting where public comment was given. The local media mocked people for mentioning it, yet didn’t bother to mention in their articles that this book is indeed on the NC recommended Text Exemplars list. The other book mentioned by Gerritson, The American Experience: 1900-Present by Prentice Hall, is not located on the DPI Text Exemplars list for NC.

If you wish to see what Prentice Hall is putting out for North Carolina, you can do so via PEARSON’S site. The items on the page there require you download and execute the file. Under language arts, this file matches up to the book described by Gerritson: The American Experience ©2000 (Gr. 11), Win

Parents would not know this book is being used unless they went off the DPI site, onto Pearson’s and searched for it. What’s more, in order to figure out Pearson had this file, I had to Google for “American Experience, Prentice Hall, North Carolina”.

Once you made it to the Pearson site, the person would then would have to download and execute the file. I attempted to do so. The file would execute and ask if I wanted to extract the files, but it would time out while actually retrieving them. The end result was I had to kill the process in the control panel because it kept timing out and would not complete the task. I never got the documents packed in that file but will continue to try. If anyone out there reading this has managed to extract the files, please email me at TheLL1885@gmail.com

I have little confidence this commission will avoid Common Core-aligned books. I find it curious that we have multiple people on it out of Guilford County, which just bought $4 million in Amplify tablets that come pre-loaded with Common Core subjects – some of which North Carolina didn’t even adopt.

I encourage parents to explore both the Text Exemplars list and Appendix B of the Common Core. Remain vigilant as to what this commission is choosing. It is unclear if the Textbook Commission is held to open meeting law requirements or not, as the statutes make no mention of this.

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