When the Lobbyists Throw a Learning Curve

Imagine how Californians would feel if lobbyists for the automobile industry drafted a bill to reduce state regulation of automobile emissions and labeled it a “reform.” Or if lobbyists for the cigarette industry designed legislation to strike down state restrictions on smoking in public places.

This is precisely what the national textbook industry is now doing in Sacramento. Lobbyists for the Assn. of American Publishers and individual textbook publishers have written legislation to change the way state and local districts buy textbooks. The lobbyists persuaded Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) to introduce the bill (SB 594), and its sponsors claim that it will “reform” state textbook adoption procedures.

One of the bill’s original sponsors, the Council for Basic Education in Washington, withdrew support when it realized that the measure served only the interests of the textbook industry. Without this organizational fig leaf, the Maddy bill stood undisguised as the industry bill.

The publishers’ lobbyists won the endorsement of the California Teachers Assn. by promising classroom educators a majority on the state committees that review textbooks, but their bill does not provide funds to compensate substitutes for absent teachers. Nor do the lobbyists care that the bill simultaneously reduces the slots available on textbook review panels for mathematicians, scientists, historians and other subject-matter specialists.

This seems to be a precedent--the first time the textbook industry has openly intervened to lobby for legislation that sets the ground rules for the consumers of their products.

Currently, text publishers who want to win a place on the state’s recommended list must meet state standards of quality in the various subject areas. The state list serves as a consumer report for teachers and local districts.

California spends more than $400 million each year on textbooks for 11% of the nation’s public-school children--the biggest textbook market in the country. For years, textbook publishers have competed to win a spot on the state’s recommended list. But many of them became annoyed when the state began raising quality standards in science, mathematics and reading. Publishers first grumbled but complied.

Next year, publishers are supposed to submit new history texts; once again they have been told that the current crop of books is not good enough. The state framework insists on the kind of stirring prose--and visual materials--that will interest kids in history. For the first time in recent memory, small publishers have a chance to compete with the major houses, since “boutique” publishers can produce vivid narratives just as well as (perhaps better than) bureaucratic conglomerates.

Apparently, the prospect of open competition proved too much for the industry. The response was to draft legislation that would emasculate the entire adoption process. In the original version of SB 594, the state was required to accept virtually everything any publisher submitted, without regard to standards of quality.

Sponsors claimed that this legislation would “reform” textbooks and eliminate “state control,” but in fact it would have stripped the consumers--local boards, teachers and students--of any voice in the marketplace. Without state adoption standards, publishers would have no incentive to change existing texts--the same books already reviewed as bland, superficial and devoid of controversy.

In response to the original Maddy bill, such nationally prominent educators as Chester Finn Jr., assistant secretary of education in the Reagan Administration, wrote to complain that it would subvert the new history curriculum. So the textbook industry lobbyists watered down their bill.

The current version, still wending its way through the State Legislature, retains state adoption but on terms defined by lobbyists for the textbook industry. About the only feature left of the original Maddy measure is that it turns over control of the State Curriculum Commission and all textbook review commissions to teachers, replacing a policy in which no group holds a majority.

A few weeks ago, the text publishers moved their political campaign to another arena. Lobbyists for the publishers’ association opposed a motion before the State Board of Education to allow teachers and local school districts the right to spend as much as 30% of textbook funds on educational materials that are not textbooks. Until now, only 20% of public funds could be spent on novels, biographies, histories, computer programs, plays and other materials.

The publishers lost this one, fortunately. On Friday, the state board agreed to give teachers the discretion of spending up to 30% of public funds on non-textbook materials, thus supporting the right of teachers to select the books they want to use, even if they are not textbooks.

Inadequate textbooks have contributed to the dumbing down of American education. If the industry succeeds in derailing reform of curricula and texts by lobbying the state Legislature, the children of California--and the nation--will be the losers.