SBOE votes to advance problematic TEKS and literary lists: recap

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At the time of writing, this is still a developing story as board members continued to make edits to social studies TEKS Friday afternoon.

The State Board of Education (SBOE) met in Austin this week to consider their agenda which included curriculum standards that will be in effect for the foreseeable future and impact millions of students daily. This edition focuses on the social studies debate; we will provide a full recap in a later edition of the Hotline. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

Many supporters of the proposed Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for social studies invoked the Declaration of Independence during their testimony on Monday to bolster their claims that the United States is a country founded on Christian faith. Except that not “all men” were created equal under the founding documents and the liberty of testifiers of different faiths was in turn ignored or attacked by several Republican SBOE members during testimony. This helped form the persistent tension in the room throughout testimony on Monday.  

Dozens of testifiers came to speak on not just the lack of diversity but the thinly veiled hostility in the standards to groups that do not match the predominantly white Christian narrative the board (and the Texas GOP more broadly) is trying to weave. 

What troubled me most about the testimonies, board questions, and comments was not simply the misunderstanding of cultures, religions, or even the teachings of Jesus. It was the confidence with which those misunderstandings were presented. Assumptions built upon assumptions. Conclusions drawn from fallacies rather than facts.  –ST (testifier) 

In addition to mentions of Islam only in negative framing, there is a focus on Western civilization rather than the entirety of world history; women’s history is ignored in some grade levels and the contributions of organized labor are sidelined and depict workers’ rights as primarily violent or anti-capitalist. 

Several testifiers also mentioned that gaps in knowledge present in the standards from the beginning were only widened by the volumes of edits made in April without respect to vertical alignment. While the board took testimony, advocates held a “funeral for religious freedom” and press conference outside in opposition to the board’s focus on Christianity as the driving force in this country’s development at the expense of other faiths. The board completed public testimony for all items on Monday’s agenda but left all items pending for further discussion and amendments.  

Agency staff did seem responsive to comments that these standards will take substantial time and fiscal effort (one estimate came in at a huge $1 billion) and therefore suggested a staggered rollout of these TEKS to allow districts to plan and budget for appropriate teacher training and instructional materials development. While this is positive for implementation, it does nothing to mitigate the possible harms done to students via historically inaccurate curriculum standards. 

They spent the remainder of each day after their regular agenda on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday discussing the standards and taking amendments. The Democrats on the board made valiant efforts to correct the many inaccuracies in the standards, but more often than not were shut down by the majority. Tuesday’s meeting ended in the wee hours of the night with a preliminary 10-3 approval of the K-5 standards. Wednesday continued in much the same fashion with a late night amendment to grade 8 requiring students to: 

explain early Islam in terms of the Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the institutionalization of slavery and the taking of female captive as harem slaves; 

Amendment work continued on Thursday evening primarily on the high school courses. There were substantial edits to these and it was determined that the economics, US government, world history, and world geography courses would be postponed until September. It was implied that stakeholders will get another opportunity to offer feedback on these courses.  

The entire week was characterized by an air of inevitability. With Republicans boldly declaring not to accept amendments from Democrats and content advisors present to ad hoc “approve” any revisions, the week was a long and tense administrative steamrolling session all the way to Friday when they continued to make amendments. Though the work on standards will continue into the fall, it appears the TEA may be getting a jump start on the curriculum development process for what will become Bluebonnet social studies.  

Texas AFT will continue to monitor and engage on these standards and report our findings in a future edition of the Hotline.