Outrage Over Anti-Latino Textbook in Texas

"I rely on subject matter experts and educators and other people to read them because they're going to be more qualified to speak to factual errors or things like that," he said.

Ratliff said it's important to note that independent school districts are not required to use the textbooks the board recommends.

Houston Independent School District, the largest in Texas, offers a Mexican-American studies course at five campuses.

HISD administrator Douglas Torres-Edwards said in an email that the course does not have a required text or instructional materials, but it includes a recommended list of material for teachers to draw from.

Of HISD's 215,000 students, 62 percent are Hispanic.

Ratliff lives in Mount Pleasant about 120 miles east of Dallas. He said his wife is a Spanish teacher who incorporates lessons about Latino culture and history, touching on the Aztec and Inca Empires, in her classes.

"Kids in her Spanish 1 class and my guess is a lot of Spanish 1 classes are also getting a pretty good coverage of some Mexican-American culture as well, so I'm not concerned about the potential damaging effects of one questionable book," he said.

The state board will decide in November what books to recommend as curriculum for the 2017-2018 school year.

Bahorich said this proclamation cycle's more inclusive textbook vetting process will ensure that the alleged inaccuracies in books like "Mexican American Heritage" are more likely to be noticed.

"What's going to happen with this proclamation and all future proclamation is that any material submitted lots of folks are going to weigh in and look at the materials and give us feedback on the errors they find, or whatever they want to point out," she said.

Texans have until September to comment on the proposed textbooks. Bahorich said it's too late for publishers to submit books, as the vetting process has already started.

Momentum Industries was the only publisher to submit an ethnic-studies book this cycle, Bahorich said, which surprised and disappointed her.

"When the board called for materials I was hoping to get quite a few submissions on possibly African-American studies, Mexican-American studies, Chinese-American studies," she said.

"I was really surprised, to be honest, because we kept hearing about all these resources, particularly in the Mexican-American study area, but none of them were submitted, which would have been great because the public would have looked at all the materials."

Ratliff said in an interview he'd be surprised if "Mexican American Heritage" makes it through the board's selection process, "because some of the statements in there not only are questionable in judgment but certainly seem to fall within the category of factual error. "

The 512-page book states: "Economic disparity between the United States and Mexico is one major issue because it is responsible for the high rate of Mexican immigration which has continued since 1930, and which in recent years has been predominantly illegal rather than legal."

But a November 2015 report from the Pew Research Center concluded that in the five years after the Great Recession of 2008, more Mexican immigrants returned to Mexico than migrated to the U.S., for a net loss of 140,000 immigrants from the States.

Marisa Perez, a Democrat from San Antonio, has served on the state education board since January 2015.

Perez said she is delighted by the backlash over "Mexican American Heritage," as it brought to light questionable information in the book.

"I am aware of some of the erroneous and horrifically biased presumptions made in this text," she said in an email.

"As a third generation Mexican-American, I find the content of this instructional material to be offensive and highly misinformed. I also stop to think about what message a text like this is sending to the tens of thousands of Latino students in our public school system in Texas about 'who they are' and 'what their heritage is.'"

She said her newborn daughter is blessed to have a great grandma to teach her about her culture, but she worries that some Latino students without familial guidance will rely on textbooks.

"This is why it is so incredibly important to ensure that the information in the text is factual and not opinion," Perez said.

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