Craig R. Barrett, the chairman of Intel, wrote about reforming education in the Jan. 23 edition of Forbes.com. We should, he said, "shift from knowledge acquisition, which limits learning to rote memorization and parroting back facts." He said we need "knowledge creation," which involves "learning how to learn."

Learning how to learn, says this former university professor, "cultivates skills that are vital for today's knowledge economy -- [skills that include] critical thinking, collaboration, analysis, problem solving, communication and innovation."

Several State Board of Education members, if they go unchecked, will have Texas children spending 13 years on rote memorization and parroting back facts instead of learning. They will lead children out of the future of technology and innovation and take them down a dead-end road.

Not only that, but these SBOE members will recklessly waste the $85,000-plus in taxpayers' money that has been spent to ensure that Texas children get the education, knowledge and skills that Barrett says they will need.

More than two years ago, the state board commissioned the development of a new set of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards. A group of highly qualified and successful teachers collaborated and came up with a document that outlines a rigorous curriculum for Texas' K-12 students. It focuses on what Barrett called "knowledge creation" and "learning how to learn."

It was a huge undertaking, and the product is essentially sound. It was still undergoing final editing for language and organization when the board received a close-to-final draft in January.

But at the last hour, board Chairman Don McLeroy introduced a substitute amendment for the document because, he said, the commissioned draft was unacceptable. This proposal, supported by board members Gail Lowe and David Bradley, had been rejected 10 years earlier by the board because it was not viable or relevant even then.

The amendment, written by a narrow interest group and questionable in its validity, was re-introduced without significant changes, if any. It is a sterling example of "rote memorization and parroting back facts." It is not education reform -- it is education regression.

First, it fails to take into account the needs of a diverse student population with a suggested reading list that is unnecessarily limited in its range. Children who are not yet accomplished and sophisticated readers want and need to see themselves in stories.

The amendment's methods and materials fail to teach "learning how to learn," a skill that becomes increasingly necessary as technology moves us ever faster into the future.

Research has shown time and again that process is what successful teachers teach, and what unsuccessful teachers don't teach. Process is at the core of the commissioned TEKS.

Another basic difference involves the roles of the teacher and students. Under the amendment, the classroom is teacher-centered, with the teacher feeding information and pupils passively receiving it. The commissioned TEKS assumes a student-centered classroom, where the teacher creates or designs a learning situation and the students actively engage in their learning: consuming information, thinking, questioning, analyzing, innovating, creating. The teacher then serves as role model, support or coach.

McLeroy's last-minute introduction of the amendment required teachers, who had been reviewing the commissioned document and were preparing to recommend edits, to spend the little remaining time focusing instead on convincing board members that they are asking for disaster.

Twenty-five teachers testified -- teachers who know firsthand the need for education reform. Their voices were essentially one in their message: The amendment is so flawed, so backward, that it does not warrant consideration. They said that the commissioned proposal should be refined in its language and organization and then adopted.

Even though these teachers were articulate, eloquent and passionate, some SBOE members ignored the testimony, demonstrating that they were uninterested in learning from the experts' knowledge and experience. One member seemed angered by an exceptionally eloquent testimony by one teacher, and she stunned observers when she launched into an unwarranted personal attack on the speaker.

It is one thing for individuals to choose to home-school their children and in so doing to choose methods and materials that they find relevant for themselves. But it is quite another to use these same materials and methods in public school classrooms when Texas teachers know that they will exclude the majority of children.

Texas, now rich in diversity of races, religions and socioeconomic levels, needs education reform that is inclusive and teaches knowledge creation.

An SBOE subcommittee will meet Friday to discuss this issue again.

Texans may have no greater responsibility at this time than to make sure our curriculum is inclusive, not exclusive, and that our children learn skills that will serve them in the future.

Write to sboesupport@tea.state.tx.us and ask board members to reject the ideas from the amendment and to decide in favor of education reform that will serve all the children of Texas.

Betsy Oney of Fort Worth holds a master of education degree and is a Master Reading Teacher (and English-as-a-second-language teacher) in the Arlington school district.