The State Board of Education (SBOE) met in Austin on Feb. 25 for a whirlwind one-day special meeting. On the agenda were items related to instructional materials, the social revision process, civics trainings, and parental rights training.
More Than a Handful of Errors
After considering a few titles to be removed from the rejected list, the board moved on to debate allowing the publisher of Bluebonnet Learning, the State of Texas, to make a substantial number of corrections to their materials. The more than 4,200 identified errors were punted from the previous agenda to give members the time to appropriately consider the changes. Though many of the errors were minor, members voiced concern over the quantity and questioned staff as to who would bear the burden of the cost to reprint these materials that are already in use in some districts. Spoiler: it’s Texas taxpayers.
Member Pam Little, who called Texas’s Bluebonnet effort “sloppy publishing”, reminded the board that not so long ago the board fined publishers, sometimes heavily, for these types of errors. The board ultimately voted (9-6) to allow the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to make the changes, but even supporters of Bluebonnet urged the TEA to improve the process so this does not happen again.
Social Studies: Manufactured Urgency and Managed Consent
We wrote recently about the previous board meeting where the “topic and subtopics” work of the content advisors was presented and in alignment with the Sept. 25 framework that emphasizes ancient and Texas history over world geography and history. As a reminder to Hotline readers, these topics were overpacked in their numbers but still left out critical aspects of social studies education and sidelined the historical contributions of other civilizations and peoples.
To the content advisors and the GOP-majority board, this whitewashing is a feature, not a bug. In fact, the last attempt to overhaul the social studies standards in 2022 was completely tanked (or “unsuccessful” in the words of Chairman Aaron Kinsey) by accusations of “far-left” ideology. The board instead chose to only revise the standards to be in compliance with Senate Bill 3, often dubbed the anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) bill.
The current Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for social studies were adopted in 2010 and went through a “streamlining” process in 2018 to remove excess content that teachers and stakeholders deemed non-essential so the remaining standards could be taught with more depth. This process involved five educator working groups and took place over several months just to cut existing content, and this context is important to understand why the current revision should be deeply troubling to districts and parents.
The accelerated timeline for complete overhaul of the standards, the first in 16 years, is being artificially driven by SB 24 which requires that the SBOE adopt standards inclusive of “an understanding of communist regimes and ideologies” in the TEKS before July 31, 2026. The provisions of this bill are the only changes the SBOE is required to adopt, yet this deadline is being leveraged to plow through a complete revision, resulting in the “special” meeting in February. Several organizations, including Texas AFT, asked the board to slow down the total revision and instead solely adopt standards to implement the requirements of the bill.
Between the last SBOE meeting in January and this week, and according to the SBOE-Approved TEKS Review and Revision Process, TEA convened Work Group A and Chair Kinsey issued the charge to determine if the key topics created by the content advisors had either too much or too little content and to begin the work of muscling the topics into recognizable standards. Though only the content advisors were invited to attend this week’s meeting, several of the more than 120 work group members felt compelled to return to Austin to give feedback on their experience.
- With the exception of world geography, the work groups found that there was far too much content to be able to successfully teach in one year. These mostly classroom teachers found that cuts to the key topics/subtopics were needed to be able to teach skills to mastery rather than simply covering an excessive number of historical points.
- Many felt Kinsey’s directive was too confining and didn’t allow them to use their full expertise as classroom teachers to amend the content advisors’ recommendations. They also expressed concern that critical points of history might be dropped entirely because they were not allowed to consult with other groups to see what was being amended. One testifier noted that all mention of the atomic bombs that effectively ended World War II had been struck from the drafts.
The resulting work group drafts hit the internet just barely within the required timeframe for public review prior to the special called meeting; the content advisors were also allowed to formulate rebuttals and those were published a few days before the meeting as well. Most members heard testimony thoughtfully and agreed that future drafts of the standards needed more rigorous and measurable skills. They also asked for an old-to-new crosswalk document to compare previously approved content to the current proposal.
However, some members including Member Julie Pickren pushed back against the expertise of the work groups, implying that she did not want 120 classroom professionals teachers determining what was taught in Texas classrooms. We can only determine that her preference is to revert to the content advisors’ work which was written by nine people, just one of whom has K-12 Texas classroom experience. Texas AFT also provided feedback that these nine advisors continue to have an outsized role in the revision process that sidelines both teachers and other required stakeholders. If the SBOE expects to complete this process with viable TEKS, then they must lean into the expertise of actual Texas classroom practitioners.
Some board members also expressed frustration at TEA’s lack of communication about the time and place for the work group meetings and the feedback sessions that the service centers are conducting on their behalf. Charitably, this is a new process that has not been implemented for a full subject-area revision, and there are many new SBOE staff without curriculum expertise charged with implementing the process. It is possible that much of the traditionally expected communication between the agency and the duly elected body is breaking down under an artificially compressed and manufactured timeline. The lack of time means that neither the board nor the public has sufficient time to consider and react to the iterations of these standards. This lack of transparency between the TEA, the board, and stakeholders undermines the trust that the public should have in the democratic processes that determine what will be taught in Texas classrooms.
Work Group B is slated to meet in Austin on March 3 and 4. The charge has not yet been developed for this meeting. The board is not slated to meet again until April, but given the enormity of the work remaining, it is likely the chairman will call another special meeting between now and then. In the meantime, there is still an opportunity to provide feedback on the standards.
TEA is providing two stakeholder engagement sessions next week. They are being held at a time that teachers are not likely to able to participate, but interested and available parties should register at the link and provide feedback.
Texas AFT will continue to monitor this process and inform members of opportunities to engage with this process.
This meeting was disheartening. While TEA and Chair Kinsey may be following the letter of the process, what we observed was clear abuse of the spirit of the same. Whether or not you agree with the obvious push toward a more Euro- and Texas-centric social studies curriculum, the process by which this is happening is being unnecessarily rushed and is creating confusion on the board and in the field. These standards may be adopted long before the broader public is aware the revision is even happening. The implications cannot be overstated—whatever version of these standards are adopted, they will be implemented around 2030, with the Bluebonnet curriculum to go with it, costing districts millions in curriculum and professional development. This is not to mention the statewide tests to make sure students know a deeply incomplete version of history.
Civics Training
TEA staff presented a 321-page slide deck to the board showcasing the product that they are expected to approve to meet the requirements of SB 3 [87(2)] for elementary administrators and teachers (secondary training will follow). Staff presented that the training was developed by Region 18 service center (subcontractor unnamed) and hewed closely to the statute, but testifiers pointed to glaring gaps in the training for it to be considered holistic.
Staff also reminded the board that the training requirement was for one teacher and one administrator per campus to successfully complete the training. As the law only provides for approval and not editorial authority by the board, there was little debate on the motion and the training was approved 10-4.
Parental Rights Training
This item is the product of SB 204 and requires the SBOE to require a trustee to complete training on the rights of a parent regarding the education of the parent’s child. The primary development of this training has been overseen by the Committee on School Initiatives.
Some testifiers stated this amounts to yet another “checkbox” in a long list of trustee trainings and that enforcement is what is truly needed. Member Julie Pickren vowed to be in the Capitol next session to advocate for greater enforcement. Member Keven Ellis moved to postpone the approval of this training until the April meeting so the entire board could have the opportunity to provide input into the content of the training, including special education. The motion carried and this will return to the full board in April in its final format.