UPDATE: ROCKWOOD SAYS THEY DID NOT USE THAT CONTROVERSIAL QUESTION. BUT, WHAT THEY DID USE FOR THE CLASS HAS ALSO DRAWN SOME CRITICISM.
"Teresa has heard in the news about the fatal shootings of unarmed African American men by police officers, but does not think it is necessarily due to racism. Teresa is most likely a:
Democrat.
black woman.
Republican.
Democrat-leaning woman."
question from Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers |
Amazon reviews for the January, 2017 edition of this textbook. It is the same textbook Rockwood says it uses in AP Government classes. |
Discovered in the Wentzville school district, in an Advanced Placement government class, the question reads:
"Teresa has heard in the news about the fatal shootings of unarmed African American men by police officers, but does not think it is necessarily due to racism. Teresa is most likely a:
Democrat.
black woman.
Republican.
Democrat-leaning woman."
This question has been the subject of posts on social media and covered by national news outlets such as Newsmax and Fox & Friends, thanks to a parent in the Wentzville School District, Lindi Williford.
RECORDS REQUEST
Williford did a records request and learned the district has paid that publisher more than $50,000 two years in a row.
ROCKWOOD ALSO PAID
We checked online records in Rockwood, and our quick review discovered our district also uses that same publisher.
$ 220, 045.29 worth of instructional materials from Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers since 2016.
Here's how Rockwood has used the publisher responsible for that question in Wentzville:
Records show Rockwood paid Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers $67, 883.12 in May, 2016 for "Ways of the World" AP World History textbooks.
Records show Rockwood has also paid the publisher an additional $152,162.17 in 2018 for 9th and 10th grade Advanced Language and Literature textbooks.
Scroll to page 10.
Purchase in April, 2018.
Wentzville's Lindi Williford updated readers Tuesday, saying that the publisher responsible for the question has now apologized, and said the question has been removed from its Learning Curve assessment bank. The publisher says it is also conducting a thorough review of remaining questions.
Response from Bedford, Freeman & Worth |
Here's what Wentzville School District administrators had to say about the question, as reported on Newsmax:
"The resources used by the district are used widely nationwide and are aligned to the AP Government exam. The item encountered by the student is extreme and the District is reaching out to the resource developers to directly address this concern."
Interviewed on Newsmax, Missouri state Representative Nick Schroer said,
"...It's scary to see that this type of indoctrination is happening; the planting the seeds of hate, seeds of Marxism so to speak. So, they're going to create and grow the next Ocasio-Cortez, or Cori Bush. We need to get back to the crux of teaching kids how to think and not what to think."