Virginia State Del. David Englin, who represents the 45^th district, has crafted a bill with City of Alexandria Councilman Rob Krupicka designed to make textbook publishers more accountable for their products' content.

"There are a number of accuracy problems in history, social studies and other textbooks used in Virginia's school systems that need to be fixed," Krupicka told Patch at an event in Del Ray, Alexandria. "The problems run the gamut – wrong years, wrong people identified and more."

The flap over Virginia textbooks began over a year ago when a Virginia parent pointed out errors in her child's textbook. State officials have since further investigated the issue, turning up a startling amount of inaccuracies in many textbooks by many publishers.

Krupicka said in a post on his blog that "we need to make changes to keep this from happening again. Publishers need to be more accountable for these problems and should be forced to send their books through proper review/editing."

"Instead of asking teachers to review a great number of textbooks" often outside of their areas of expertise, "publishers should produce accurate textbooks," Krupicka told Patch on Saturday.

The bill would have publishers follow guidelines set by the state Board of Education. Former Gov. Tim Kaine appointed Krupicka to the Virginia Board of Education in 2009.

"We want to put more accountability on publishers to describe who are the content experts contributing to these books" and to offer more transparency, said Krupicka.

Krupicka said he has not yet got reaction from the publishing industry on how its members might receive the measure.