Tom Horne, the state superintendent of Arizona, said that biased textbook phrasing introduces one-sided narratives to students and urged parents and school boards to insist on factual content. This statement was made on the Grand Canyon Times Podcast.
“There’s a propaganda technique when you want to say something that you don’t have any evidence for and you don’t want to take responsibility for it,” said Horne. “But you want to say it to influence the reader or the listener. You say, ‘many people say'”
Debates over textbook content and bias have intensified in Arizona. Disputes center on school boards adopting social studies and history textbooks accused of promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)-related viewpoints, despite public pledges not to do so. These controversies have led to legislative proposals like the “Unbiased Teaching Act,” which seeks to limit controversial content in classrooms, according to the Arizona Department of Education.
Reported complaints about textbook bias have risen in Arizona. Several districts received dozens of formal objections in 2023–24 under Senate Bill 1700 (SB 1700), especially targeting perceived ideological content in social studies materials, as reported by the Mohave Journal and 12News.
Arizona is one of the few states where textbook review and approval are handled locally by districts rather than through a statewide system. The Arizona Department of Education offers guidance but does not centrally review instructional materials, unlike California or Texas, as reported by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA).
Horne, born in Canada, is a Harvard-trained attorney who served 24 years on the Paradise Valley school board. He was Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction from 2003–2011 and again from 2023. He also served as state Attorney General from 2011–2015 with a record of supporting ethnic studies bans and school choice, according to Wikipedia.
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FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Leyla Gulen: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I’m your host, Layla Golan. In this episode, we welcome our guest, Tom Horn. Tom is Arizona’s State superintendent of public instruction, currently serving his second term in the role he previously served as Arizona’s Attorney General and has been a prominent advocate for academic standards and neutrality in public education throughout his career.
Superintendent Horn has focused on ensuring that schools provide a balanced fact-based curriculum. Free from Political bias. Superintendent, welcome.
Tom Horne: Thank you.
Leyla Gulen: So DEI, it’s set at a crossroads. It was just announced that Harvard University is rebranding its DEI offices and to quote, community and belonging centers.
While the Department of Education has initiated civil rights probes into George Mason University over its hiring practices and potential [00:01:00] antisemitism, various companies are dismantling their DEI programs. Why don’t you share with us if you could. Your concerns about biased or politically motivated content in history and geography, textbooks adopted by Scottsdale Unified School District?
Tom Horne: Well, lemme talk in general first, and then I’ll talk about Scottsdale. As a general matter, I believe the most interesting philosophical divide in our country today is between people like me who believe in individual merit and those who would substitute racial. Entitlements for individual merit. And the problem with racial entitlements is that they don’t do anything to stimulate hard work, conscientiousness, or creativity.
So if they were to win, we would become a mediocre nation and China would become the dominant power calling the shots. If you can imagine a world like that. Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve been an enemy of [00:02:00] DEI and its predecessor critical race Theory. Since 2008 the Tucson Unified District had something called ethnic studies, and part of that curriculum was an explicit curriculum on critical race theory.
I wrote a bill that was passed by the legislature to put a stop to it. I had forced it and we did put a stop to it at the time. Later on. After I left being superintendent to become Attorney General, things started going backwards again, so the fight goes on, but it’s a, it’s a fight I’ve been involved in since 2008.
For a long time I felt like a voice in the wilderness. No one was really interested. But when Fox News started referring to critical race theory as CRT, I figured the world was catching up with me and, and I’m delighted to have the president’s support on this now.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. And what do you hope listeners take away from this message when it comes to public school curriculum and presenting facts, not political narratives.[00:03:00]
Tom Horne: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. If you, do you want me to talk about Scottsdale now?
Leyla Gulen: Yes, please. Please. Yeah.
Tom Horne: So first of all, let me mention that there’s a. There’s a propaganda technique when you wanna say something that you don’t have any evidence for, and you don’t wanna take responsibility for it, but you wanna say it to influence the reader or the listener.
You say, many people say. And then they can’t criticize you because, well, I was just talking about many people, but you don’t cite any people. There’s no way to check it. So at page 10 33 of this book, it says, many people, many people, including Black Lives Matter activists, argued that these separate events, as well as the death of many black people in earlier years was a result of deeply embedded racism.
Now, nothing was said about what other people say. I don’t believe. That the United States is basically racist country. And I, and I think a vast majority of people do not do agree with me, but in the book, all they do is present one side, a side, a [00:04:00] very small minority point of view, and they cite many people rather than giving any evidence or, or, or, or telling who they’re talking about.
Um, same, same page referring to the 2020 riots. It says. Protest marches were generally peaceful. We’ve all seen video on television of a reporter saying that the march is generally peaceful in 2020 surrounded by burning Abu buildings and attacks on police cars. So that’s just flatly wrong.
It was not GE generally peaceful at all. It was extremely violent. There was something like a billion dollars of damage done. People who had invested their life savings and businesses were ruined. And, there were a number of deaths, so that’s a ridiculous statement to say that it was generally peaceful.
It was not peaceful, it was very violent. It did a lot of damage to human beings and to, and to property. And when you do damage to property like that, you ruin the lives of people who’ve invested in it, sometimes their life [00:05:00] savings. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Then in page 10 24, referring to the incident at Ferguson, one witness.
Now here, they depart from many people. They say one witness is very interesting claimed. That before being shot. Brown had raised his hands and said, don’t shoot. Here’s the fact. To his Everlasting credit, Eric Holder, the first African-American, United States Attorney General in history, conducted an objective investigation, include and concluded that Officer Wilson shot Ferguson in self-defense.
So this whole thing about people holding up their hands and saying, don’t shoot. Uh uh, that it’s a big lie. The way they get away with this big lie is they only quote one witness who was an obvious liar. And they don’t, they don’t say anything about a, a study conducted by the first African-American, United States Attorney General in history, who found that, that that Officer Wilson shot in [00:06:00] self-defense and this whole thing about hands up don’t shoot was a, was a big lie.
No. Then at page 10 26, they say a basic tentative democracy is that power should belong to the people. But what can people try if they feel they’re not being heard or if they live under an authoritarian system? I’m still quoting from them. Civil resistance emphasis, a broad, emphasizes a broad range of lawful and nonviolent action aimed at returning power to the people.
Use this video as a brief introduction. So they have a video urging people to break the law, and are involved in resistance to the law. Now, we don’t live in a dictatorship where somebody got power by force or by inheritance. We live in a democratic Republican where people are elected. And, and so we have the wonderful opportunity in this country.
If you disagree with what the government’s doing, you have, you have an, an outlet as part of the system, which is you can vote for somebody that disagrees as you disagree. [00:07:00] You can campaign for them. That’s what our system is. And, and to have a video urging students to break the law, to try to impose a minority position against the majority elected officials.
I think is, is flat, wrong and very destructive.
Leyla Gulen: Let me ask you this, who is the publisher of these textbooks?
Tom Horne: I think it’s Savas. A-S-A-V-V-A-S.
Leyla Gulen: And is there not, because if it omits counter narratives to these claims lanes, is there not. Someone else at these textbook publishers that can make that argument?
Is it just, just that one-sided narrative? It gets printed, it gets into schools. The schools accept it. They place them in in school rooms and curricula
Tom Horne: from,
Leyla Gulen: right.
Tom Horne: Yeah. This is an, this is an old problem. I remember complaining in my first term back in the [00:08:00] like 2004 or so, complaining to a publishing company.
I read their book on world history and it, and they talked about Greece, which is the foundation of the whole idea of democracy. And, and, and much of our philosophy and, and our appreciation of beauty and so on is it was a wonderful civilization. And the first page is, is in big letters. And all it says about them is the criticisms.
They, they enslaved people, they women didn’t have equal rights. Those are bad things, but that’s not. That’s not the main thing that students need to learn about, about Greece. They need to learn about democracy and philosophy and aesthetics and all. All Greece is the foundation of all those things. So I complained, and the guy that I complained to was very nice about it, but they didn’t change a thing.
You have you, in some cases you have radicals who have taken over the publishing companies. In other cases, you have them [00:09:00] responsive. States that choose their textbooks on a state level and maybe liberal states, which Arizona doesn’t. It leaves textbooks to be chosen by districts. Can I give you one more example?
Leyla Gulen: Yes, yes, please. Yeah. It’s just kind of stunning that there is no check or balance when it comes to what actually gets printed, published, and sent to these schools. Right.
Tom Horne: The balance should be presided by, should be provided by the, by the school boards. This is, but
Leyla Gulen: you
Tom Horne: know, parents complained about this Sure.
And, and, and rightly so. And in another district. They, they pass it on to the publisher and the publisher gave them a version without this stuff. But Gods Still School Board is, is radically majority, is radically left. There are two good conservatives, but there are three radical Leftwing people. And, and this is interesting because Scottsdale’s a conservative community.
We have many conservative communities with radical left school boards. ’cause the teacher’s union recruits teachers to run [00:10:00] in districts where they live and gives them a lot of money. In the case of Scottsdale, they spent $500,000 on a school board race. I, I served on school board for 24 years, which was six races that I won, and nobody ever spent more than $20,000 I would say, but they spent 500,000 on a school board race.
This shows how important it’s to the radicals to control school boards, especially in a state like Arizona. Where we have local control. So these school boards have an awful lot of power. Let me give you one more example. Yes, please. It says, page 1 67 of a, of a supplemental book, renovations and improvements.
Conforming to middle class preferences has driven up the demand for housing and the cost of living in these neighborhoods, making it difficult for less affluent, more vulnerable, l gbt qi plus populations to live there. I, I never found out what. QUI means, but the, I’m not sure
Leyla Gulen: I know either,
Tom Horne: but the [00:11:00] suggestion that LGBT people are financially oppressed is extremely misleading.
Many LGBT people are quite prosperous. The median income for men in same-sex marriage is $149,900. The median income for men in opposite sex married couples is $124,900. So they have a higher median income than, than than heterosexuals. And, and the book is, the book is Misleadingly saying that gays are financially oppressed.
One more example, they say Republican lawmakers in some states packed African American voters into a single district or a small number of districts, thereby creating majority Republican districts in the rest of the state. That’s the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that, that it was a civil rights project of the Democratic Party whose goal was to assure minority representation in Congress, and it worked.
We see a lot more minority representatives in Congress, but the Republican party had nothing to do with it. This was not done to [00:12:00] to, to pack, as they say, pack Amer African Americans in it’s into a single district. Thereby creating major Republican majority districts. It was done to assure minority, minority representation in Congress.
So it was just an outright lie.
Leyla Gulen: And, and was this from the, the AP Human Geography textbook?
Tom Horne: Yes.
Leyla Gulen: Okay. So it’s, it’s titled Human Geography, a Spatial Perspective.
Tom Horne: That’s correct.
Leyla Gulen: Okay, I see. So. That’s very interesting. So they’re, they’re calling out actual political parties in this text. So essentially these young impressionable minds are being indoctrinated with just one view and graduating out of high school believing Republicans, bad Democrats.
Good.
Tom Horne: Exactly.
Leyla Gulen: Okay. And. What has been [00:13:00] done? I know you, you said you’ve, you’ve raised concerns, you’ve reached out, you’ve tried to get things changed. They refuse to change it. You had mentioned parents, I, in some states, parents are going to have a say as to whether or not their children are exposed to. I’m not sure if it’s all DEI but certainly LGBT.
Materials. So what about, well,
Tom Horne: they could, parents have the power to opt out. They’ve had that in Arizona.
Leyla Gulen: They, they do. Okay. Okay. And,
Tom Horne: and now the Supreme Court has said, has upheld, uh, that on a national basis.
Leyla Gulen: So what do we do about getting more balanced textbooks into these schools?
Tom Horne: Well, I think the answer is.
Elect majorities to these school boards. Now, in states where these things are selected as statewide basis, it’s a different story. But in Arizona we have local control, and the school boards have the power to do this. I’m up for reelection next year, so it’s a four year term. So last year, which was an election year, I was not up for reelection, so all of [00:14:00] my political activity went into raising money for conservative candidates, for school boards.
And we had some success in the southeastern part of, of Maricopa County, but we failed in in, in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. Both very conservative communities because the teachers union put so much money into it.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. So there’s still the challenge there. So if you were to be reelected in this for another term, what would be your next order of business?
Tom Horne: With respect to this, it’d to help help elect Republicans to school boards, or, let me say this, instead of making it on a partisan basis, help elect academically oriented people to school boards rather than ideologically oriented.
Leyla Gulen: Have any of the students, just outta curiosity, have any of the students raised concerns?
Sometimes it’s surprising when students at that age will actually speak up and speak out. I’m curious if any have in Scottsdale or elsewhere in [00:15:00] Arizona for that matter.
Tom Horne: I’m not aware of that. The, the ones who did speak out are the parents and. Compiled a lot of information that I, that has been useful to me.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Yeah. I see. Okay. Well, I, there’s much more that we can say about this. You’ve given us some very interesting examples and insight into what’s being taught in these classrooms. When you’re so far removed, the older you get, and with every passing year, you don’t realize. Unless you have a child that’s currently enrolled.
But before we, we end our conversation, I wanna get into just some of a more holistic view of the education system in Scottsdale and Arizona. If we could, just so our listeners can get kind of a full picture and I, I was curious if you could also address student test scores in the post COVID era. Just curious what plans are to boost recovery and especially in reading and in mathematics.
Tom Horne: So the media liked to write about controversies, and I understand that they’re more [00:16:00] interesting, but my 90% of my time and effort in that of the department goes into helping schools do better academically. And we have 15 initiatives. I’m involved in every one, so I’m working very hard on it. I give you an example.
We send solutions teams, highly qualified teachers and principals to help schools do better. One of their projects was the bottom. 5% of the schools, 90 some schools, and after, after our solutions teams worked with them, 70% of those schools were no longer in the bottom 5%. We also adopted a school in a very poor neighborhood, close to our, our office in downtown Phoenix.
We adopted the fifth. Fifth grade and people from the department went there every week to teach classes and help the teachers do a better job, job teaching classes. They raised the math scores by 27% and, and, and we proved that K poor kids can learn just as well as rich kids if they’re properly taught now, getting the overall percentages.[00:17:00]
Up for 1,000,200 thousand students is a big job and it needs eight years and that’s why I’m running for it reelection.
Leyla Gulen: Okay. Very good. And how about mental health? It’s also a hot topic. What concrete steps is, is your office taking or that you hope to take to support both students and staff?
Tom Horne: Well, I have, I have a, I have paid for a number of counselors, both social workers and.
And the school counselors in the schools, we have a, we have a school safety law that appropriated money to me. The first preference I gave was for police officers, but the legislation provides that if, if the schools don’t, and, and, and it, we, I’ve been very successful with it, we’ve increased the number of police officers in schools from one 90 to, to 5 65.
But if, if we don’t get requests for police officers to use up [00:18:00] all the money, I can use it for counselors and, and social workers, and that’s what I’ve done.
Leyla Gulen: Oh, okay. Very good. And Arizona being a border state, there’s a large population of English language learners. How are you addressing the needs of those students while balancing your emphasis on English immersion?
Tom Horne: Well, that, that’s the English immersion is the best solution for those students. ’cause they learn English quickly and then they can exceed academically. Two years before I was elected, the legislature. There was an initiative. In fact, one of the authors of the initiative is now my chief deputy and has been for the last 20 years.
And, and it provided that, no more bilingual education, no, no more dual language education. They had to have structured English immersion. So when I took office, we had bi. My two predecessors didn’t enforce it. So when I took off as we had bilingual education throughout the state [00:19:00] and the number of students who became proficient in English.
In, in one year was a pathetic 5%. At that rate, almost nobody would ever become proficient. They’d fail. Fail in both in school and in the economy. So we introduced structured English emerged. I was the first one to enforce the the initiative, and even equally important. We had a very good person, LA Santa Cruz, who’s in charge of training the teachers.
That’s a very important part of structured English immersion. She did a great job and, and when I left office, we had 31% of the students becoming pro provision English in one year, which means in three or four years, they all become, essentially all become proficient. So we prove that it works, but there’s an ideological bent, left wingers.
Prefer bilingual for some strange reason. So after I was out of office. 10 districts illegally started, went back to bilingual education, and I’m in court fighting [00:20:00] them as we speak. Oh,
Leyla Gulen: oh goodness. All right. Well, I have one last question for you. Mitigating teacher shortages, you know, different states, they’re trying different tactics.
What is your office doing to improve recruitment, retention, and, and even compensation for educators across the state?
Tom Horne: Well, every time I give a state of education speech at the legislature. I emphasize this issue, we are losing more teachers than are coming to the profession. So I tell the legislature, if we don’t take strong action and the trend continued, we could end up with zero teachers.
You can imagine how the public would react to that. So we absolutely have to raise their salaries, and I and I continue to campaign for that. There’s a lot of support in the legislature. Two years ago, we had a surplus and a Republican legislator named Matt Grass had a bill to give e every teacher a $10,000 raise.
Believe it or not, the teachers union posted because it came from a Republican, [00:21:00] they don’t really represent the interest of the teachers. The majority of their members now are classified janitors, secretaries, and so on, and, and it failed, which you, I thought was a catastrophe. So we, we, right now, our best bet to raise teacher salaries is something called Prop 1, 2 3, which spends money out of our land trust, which has lots of money and I’ve been pushing very hard that they’re not doing it this year, but hopefully they’ll do it next year to raises salaries out of that.
The other thing I tell the legislature is we have to provide incentives to, to administrators, support teachers on discipline. A lot of teachers leave the profession. Because the, if the admin, the administrators are liberal and they don’t support them on discipline and so they end up with, with classes that are anarchic and they can’t teach that way, I wouldn’t be leave the profession under that circumstance.
Yeah. And so I’ve had legislation for two years running now to give administrators, you have an administrators [00:22:00] philosophy is somebody misbehaves. They say, oh you poor darling. It’s not your fault. You come from a poor family or whatever. And that’s not the way to do it. You have to have. Actions have to have consequences.
I served 24 years on a school board for Arizona’s, then third largest district, 10 years as its president. In those 24 years, we did not reverse a teacher one time on discipline, not once. And as a result, we became known as the toughest district around. But our learning went up, our test scores went up, and I’m trying to bring that to the state level.
It’s a tough fight, but I’ll keep fighting it.
Leyla Gulen: Yeah. Yeah. I’m glad that you brought up the Antarctic anarchic behavior of these students these days. I don’t know how teachers do it. They
Tom Horne: have so many lot more challenges. Yeah. Of profession. ’cause they, they can’t stand it and it’s a fault of the administrators.
I had somebody write me a letter. She was a teacher at Phoenix Union High School District, which has a terrible school board. It’s very left wing school board. And she told a, a student to do her work. [00:23:00] She believes it. She agrees with my philosophy that. Every instructional minute is precious. And the student said, F you, but not, not in the letter.
They used the word of course administration and they say, use social emotional learning. Well, that doesn’t create any incentives against, against bad behavior. And, and it’s shocking. And, and so I’m fighting that
Leyla Gulen: goodness. Well, for anybody who wants to reach out to you, who has any concerns or questions, where should they go?
Tom Horne: Tom dot Horn. Horn with an e@azed.gov. azed.gov. Very. That’s the formula for everyone in our department. First name, do last name@azed.gov.
Leyla Gulen: Okay, wonderful. And do you have any other additional information regarding your campaign for your next term?
Tom Horne: Well, I’m working hard.
Leyla Gulen: Okay. And, and PE And people can follow you and, and they can donate to your campaign as well, I imagine.
Tom Horne: Yeah, tom horn.com Again, horn with an e, [00:24:00] tom ho com ho with an e.com. Terrific. Okay. That’s my political website.
Leyla Gulen: All Superintendent Tom Horn, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank
Tom Horne: you. It’s a pleasure to be with you.
Leyla Gulen: Thank you.
