Yep. And Texas has the greatest influence here. As an explanation, i’ll cut and paste a post i made on this issue a few years back.
Now, it is certainly true that Texas and California have a disproportionate influence over the publication and adoption of textbooks in the United States. This is not merely because both are large states, however; it is because they are both large staes that have state-level textbook adoption procedures. In theory, New York could also exert considerable pressure on publishers, but New York is an “open territory” state, with textbooks adopted on a local city or county level.
Large cities like New York City and Chicago can have some influence on textbook publication, but not as much as large adoption states like Texas and Califronia. Furthermore, despite California’s larger population, Texas actually has a greater overall influence on the textbook industry, because state-level textbook adoption in Texas occurs at all grades, K-12. In California, by contrast, state-level adoptions are K-8, with high school textbook decisions made on a local level. Interestingly, state-level adoptions, which occur in twenty states, are predominant in the American south and south-west, while northern states tend to prefer a local adoption system.
What makes Texas even more interesting is that it has had, since the 1960s, a procedure whereby the citizens of Texas can oppose the adoption of particular textbooks. This procedure required a written complaint outlining the reasons for the opposition, and also offered complainants the opportunity to appear at a public hearing in front of the state’s textbook committee, at which the complaint would be reiterated and expanded, and at which the textbook publishers could attempt to rebut any charges brought against their books.
This sounds, at first blush, like a pretty good system: democracy in action, right? A key problem, however, was that there was no provision in the procedure for Texas citizens to appear or testify in support of textbooks that they felt should be on the curriculum, or that they felt were being unfairly challenged. This meant that the hearing involved only complainants and the textbook publishers, and the latter’s obvious financial interest in having their books adopted meant that they sometimes caved in and changed the text even if the criticism was unfair or unwarranted.
For years, the Texas Education Agency received letters from citizens arguing for a change in the procedure to allow for citizens to appear in support of textbooks. I’ve been through the TEA archives for the period, and have copies of letters arguing, for example, that the system of “[o]ne-sided testimony inevitably injures the cause of truth and education” and “effectively gag[s] many potential participants and prevent[s] other viewpoints that may represent the majority of citizens in the state from being expressed.” Finally, after years of such complaints, the state legislature amended the Texas Education Code in 1982 to allow petitions in support of textbooks by any citizen of Texas. Even then, however, Texans were only allowed to offer written support of a book against which petitions of complaint had been made, and were not allowed to make an oral defense of the books at the public hearing, thus leaving the textbook critics with the upper hand in determining the scope of the debate.
The ostensibly open and transparent procedures adopted in Texas have actually given a small number of vocal conservative interest groups the upper hand in determining what will and will not be taught in Texas schools.