Educational Research Analysts is an organization based in Longview, Texas in the United States, founded by Mel and Norma Gabler to monitor public school textbooks. The organization reviews books to locate factual errors and to promote a conservative Christian point of view, offering preference to textbooks which, for example, promote sexual abstinence rather than contraception and firearms safety rather than gun control. They launched the organization in 1961 from their kitchen table in tiny Hawkins in Wood County in east Texas, after having begun to review textbooks assigned to their son. Many of the books that the Gablers have given high ratings have been adopted by the Texas State Textbook Committee. If a school district wishes textbooks with other viewpoints than those approved by the state committee, it must fund such materials from its own resources.
Criticism
Progressives, teachers, professors, parents, and civil libertarians have alleged that the Gablers promoted their fundamentalist views in the textbook selection process. They have pointed out that the Gablers did not have college degrees, yet assumed the role of textbook monitors and claimed editorial authority over textbook authors. Many criticized the State Board of Education for giving the Gablers undue influence. The Texas State Board of Education wields enormous influence upon the choice of textbooks used across America, because Texas, as a large and populous state, requires many textbooks, and both publishers and smaller states can save much-needed operating costs or education funds by simply using the Texas version of a given text.
The deaths of the Gablers
Mel Gabler died of a brain hemorrhage on December 19, 2004, after falling and hitting his head two days earlier. Norma Gabler died of Parkinson's disease on July 22, 2007. She had been unable to assume her duties for the last two years of her life.
The organization is now operated by Neal Frey, who had worked with the Gablers since 1982.