School districts that adopt Bluebonnet Learning receive $60 per student. (Photo byplherrera/Getty Images)
Fort Worth ISD is now one of the largest districts in Texas to implement Bluebonnet Learning, and will receive millions of dollars from the state for adopting the new materials.
Fort Worth Independent School District recently adopted Bluebonnet Learning for its reading language arts curriculum for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
The learning materials were created by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and approved by the Texas State Board of Education in November. The curriculum covers kindergarten through eighth grade math, and a kindergarten through fifth grade reading language arts program that uses Christian stories from the Bible in reading materials.
School districts that adopt Bluebonnet Learning receive $60 per student from the state, which means Fort Worth ISD will get a windfall for using the religion-infused reading curriculum.
The financial incentive could help the district, which has about 70,000 students and a $43 million budget deficit.
Fort Worth ISD is also at risk of a state takeover by the TEA, and residents at a Sept. 23 school board meeting questioned if the district was adopting the new materials to avoid that looming threat, but Superintendent Karen Molinar rejected the implication.
“I believe this is a high quality instructional material and this is not because of the threat of a takeover,” she said.
Molinar emphasized how the new materials will help teachers, as they’re designed to reduce prep time since lesson plans and calendars are already baked into the curriculum. They also reinforce previously-learned skills and concepts as students progress, Molinar said, and emphasize writing across subject areas.
Fort Worth ISD faced a literacy crisis last year, with almost two-thirds of students not reading proficiently at their grade level, according to 2024 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) results.
However the district saw improvements in 2025, with preliminary STAAR results showing that 41% of third- and fourth-grade students met grade level in reading—up from 33% in 2024, according to the Fort Worth Report.
Critics, including the ACLU of Texas, have warned superintendents throughout Texas about the potential harm of Bluebonnet Learning, stating that the materials impose religious beliefs on Texas students and violate their first amendment rights.
“We urge you to refuse this invitation to promote one type of religious belief in public schools,” the ACLU said in a January letter. “Decisions about whether and how to instill religious beliefs should be made by students and their families, not state and local officials. Implementing the Bluebonnet curriculum in your district would unlawfully impose a set of religious beliefs upon your students and violate their constitutionally guaranteed right to be free from religious coercion.”
Fort Worth ISD trustees voted 6-3 on Sept. 23 to approve the materials, with school trustees Wallace Bridges, Quinton Phillips, and Camille Rodriguez voting against its implementation.
“I’m a born again Christian, and I say that proudly and I’m very passionate about that,” Bridges said during the vote. “And just as much as I’m passionate about my relationship with God, I am as passionate when it comes to a separation between this church and state. I think that is, in my opinion, that’s a line that I’m having difficulty crossing. I’ve taken hundreds of kids to church with me, not one time I’ve ever taken a kid without getting approval from his parent or somebody that I know that was okay with that.”
“I don’t want to be perceived that I’m against the Bible and some of the references to the Bible at school. I just don’t think that the school is the place for that to happen,” he continued.
Phillips said that adopting a curriculum with religious text embedded in it is “the very definition of indoctrination.”
About one in four Texas school districts and charter schools have adopted or announced plans to adopt the religious learning materials, according to the Texas Tribune. In North Texas, Irving, Burleson, Crowley, Duncanville, and Lake Worth ISDs have all adopted Bluebonnet Learning.
Superintendent Matt Smith also announced that Arlington ISD is auditing its curriculum, and that they “absolutely will take a look at Bluebonnet,” according to NBC DFW.
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