The Texas State Board of Education is in the process of rewriting the K-12 social studies curriculum. The new standards would shape teachers' lesson plans and textbooks for more than 5.5 million students in Texas.
Last year, the board adopted a new framework to teach social studies. Some of the major changes include teaching events in chronological order, emphasizing Texas and U.S. history and deemphasizing world history. But the process of rewriting the curriculum has been contentious. Some people involved have been critical of how historical events are presented, the amount of content teachers are expected to cover in each grade and the Texas-centric approach.
Meghan Dougherty was part of a workgroup that provided feedback on the curriculum. She said this is an approach that doesn't exist anywhere else in the country.
"It's a huge shift. Teachers are gonna have to learn all new content," Dougherty said. "Any lesson plans that they currently have are going to be thrown out."
The State Board of Education has appointed nine content advisers to review drafts, provide feedback and make recommendations to the board on the new state standards. Some advocacy groups have raised concerns about some content advisers having a right-wing bias.
Dougherty said she is also concerned that most of the appointed advisers do not have experience teaching K-12.
"They're writing topics that are being taken as standards for kindergartners and first graders when they really don't even have a good understanding of the cognitive and developmental abilities of 6-year-olds," she said.
Dougherty said that while using chronological order makes sense on the surface, the curriculum jumps from ancient history to Texas history. She said jumping around topics will make it hard for younger kids to get a good grasp of history and connect abstract ideas to the present.
The curriculum would create a new 'Texas identity'
The new framework has students in kindergarten through second grade learn about foundational people, events and places in Texas and the U.S. Third to seventh grade curriculum would be chronologically organized and focus on Texas, U.S. and world history.
Eighth grade would focus on all prior content, along with an emphasis on what the framework describes as "Texas as a leader in the nation and the world." High school courses will continue to cover specialties, such as world geography or Mexican American studies, but the new standards make changes there, too.
SBOE-appointed academic adviser Donald Frazier told the board that the curriculum changes were an opportunity to "create an American and Texas identity," stepping away from divisive identity issues.
Yolanda Chávez Leyva, also an appointed adviser, said including a diverse perspective of history has been challenging, since she feels some voices in the discussion are heard more than others. She said identifiers, including "native American" or "indigenous," have sparked heated discussions.
"We were wording one piece of content where I suggested we say there were diverse groups of American Indians, and the word 'diverse' was controversial," Chávez Leyva said. "The really foundational question is: whose history is going to be silenced and whose history is going to be taught?"
Chávez Leyva and Dougherty expressed worry that the curriculum only tells one side of Texas and U.S. history.
Educators have also raised concerns about the way topics are presented, including blurring the separation between church and state and presenting the biblical figure Moses as a historical figure too.
Other topics have been omitted altogether, including the Japanese American internment camps during WWII, opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and positive contributions of Islam.
Texas history would be a core part of studies in all grade levels
The new framework requires students to learn about Texas history in all grades. Critics worry that world history is being framed around a Western and Texas lens.
"They are so focused on this whole narrative that everything was leading to the creation of the United States and Texas" Dougherty said. "And when you're starting with that conclusion, then you're now forcing history to follow a certain mold."
Under the proposed curriculum, second graders would not learn about ancient societies in Asia when covering ancient civilizations. But third graders would learn about ancient Israel and Greek connections to the U.S. and Texas.
Dougherty said she thinks this framework will give students a flattened version of history.
"They're trying to draw a story that is American and Texan exceptionalism," she said. "They are minimizing or erasing many incidents in the past that are less than pleasant. Students are going to have a very myopic view of the world, of history and how we've come to be who we are today."
Teachers say there's not enough time to teach all of what's proposed
Amy Ceritelli, a Texas middle school teacher and a member of one of the workgroups, said she worries teachers will be stretched too thin between multiple subjects.
"The training that's going to be needed to get elementary teachers up to speed to teach some of the amount of this content, that's a concern for me," she said. "When are we gonna learn and who is gonna pay for that?"
With many school districts facing budget deficits, questions have been raised about who would carry the financial burden of training more than 320,000 teachers, buying new textbooks and teacher instructional materials, among other things.
Beyond the learning curve teachers will have to tackle, Ceritelli also wonders how it will impact student's education.
"I don't think there's an understanding of what a school day is really like," she said. "The seriousness and amount of content there, I just think it's unrealistic and that it cannot be covered."
Ceritelli said the changes have become a partisan issue, but her concern is students getting a quality education.
"It's not a conservative issue or a liberal issue for our kids to be educated," she said. "We want educated citizenship."
The SBOE is expected to do a first reading and discuss the new standards on April 7. There will also be public testimony heard. The board is expected to vote on a final version in June.
The new curriculum would not go into effect until the fall 2030 to give the state time to create instructional materials.
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