Texas moves forward with state-centered social studies curriculum, trimming world history and diversity lessons

The board voted June 23 to cut some depictions of slavery and racism from the curriculum standards, including removing lessons that would have taught students about slave revolts and pulling back in-depth discussions of Jim Crow segregation policies.

Among the cuts were a requirement that students learn about “the central role of the expansion of slavery” in the U.S. Civil War and content specifying that “Africans were enslaved in the United States because of the color of their skin.”

The changes were generally supported by the SBOE’s 10 Republican members and opposed by the five Democrats on the board. Some of the amendments were made at the recommendation of the board’s nine appointed content advisers, which include scholars, professors, consultants and one public school teacher.

Some Democratic board members said they did not feel they had appropriate input in the revision process and questioned why the board was referencing a document created by the content advisers over feedback from educators.

“It serves an injustice to what we were called to do as elected officials [by] our constituents, knowing that we don’t have a voice in this moment to bring what we worked on to this table,” SBOE member Tiffany Clark, D-DeSoto, said June 23. “Our voices are being left off constantly.”

LJ Francis, a Republican board member from Corpus Christi, argued that the SBOE has the final say in the social studies rewrite.

“We are the leaders of this process,” he said. “Everybody has the right to make amendments and receive up or down votes, so I don’t think we should be crying if our amendments don’t pass.”

Proponents of the rewritten standards have said they will improve students’ understanding of Texas and U.S. history, translating to better performance on state assessments. This year, the Texas Education Agency reported that about 51% of Texas students met or exceeded grade-level expectations on the eighth-grade social studies and U.S. history segments of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR.

“Our history is inspiring. It's remarkable. And today, our students are not learning it—50% of Texas students across the state are not proficient in grade level social studies standards,” SBOE member Brandon Hall said June 22. “So, what we're doing now is clearly not working, and this is a major overhaul that will improve this.”

One more thing

Educators and Texas Education Agency staff have warned the SBOE that the proposed standards include “too much content” across multiple grades.

As written, the new standards would significantly increase the amount of information students learn each school year. Historians have said that the density of content required in each grade could limit teachers’ ability to hold in-depth discussions on some topics and force students to memorize large collections of facts.

In a June 11 post on its website, the American Historical Association urged its members to submit public comments and contact SBOE members about “omissions and distortions that diminish students’ understanding of the past” in the proposed standards. The association highlighted the board’s focus on Western history; limited mentions of the role of women and Black people in major historical events; and the exclusion of the word “racism” across grade levels.

During a June 24 discussion, SBOE member Evelyn Brooks, R-Frisco, said she was concerned that the board was writing more detailed standards than it had the authority to.

“Are we writing knowledge [standards] or are we writing curriculum?” Brooks asked. “We are not curriculum writers.”

TEA staff have urged the board in its amendment process this week to remove content when possible instead of creating new topics, although board members have frequently opted to make one-to-one changes by cutting one standard when adding another.