It’s Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Happy Wednesday!

I hope you’re enjoying the summer months and beating this Texas heat. This week, the State Board of Education is in Austin to deliberate and approve a required reading list and new social studies teaching standards that, if you’re not new to The TexEd Report, shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Over the last few months, I’ve spoken with educators, parents, and advocates about these two items and the harm they could bring to Texas public schools. The board is scheduled to make a final vote on Friday, but has already given a preliminary OK to the reading list and elementary social studies standards.

You’ll find a breakdown on Monday and Tuesday’s meetings below. You’ll also learn more about the price Texans will have to pay to fix the over 4,000 errors found in Bluebonnet Learning earlier this year.

Finally, we wrap up this month’s Pride-themed banned book club. If you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here.

Katie Serrano

DFW Political Correspondent, COURIER Texas

State Board of Education reconvenes in Austin

The Texas State Board of Education is in meetings from June 22-26 in Austin to deliberate and vote on a required reading list that includes passages from the Bible, along with new social studies teaching standards. Here’s what you may have missed:

👉Public testimony began on Monday, with a Garland ISD educator speaking out against the required reading list. More than half of testifiers asked the board to shorten the list, remove Christian references, and include more diverse authors.

👉Late Monday, a Texas student testified against the social studies rewrite, calling out the far-right conservative members of the SBOE for excluding world religions and cultures from the standards.

👉Late Tuesday, the board gave preliminary approval to the required reading list, which includes nearly 200 literary works that public school students would begin reading as soon as 2030. Some Bible stories were removed, such as Noah’s Ark in First Grade. However, about a dozen remain, including David and Goliath in Second Grade and specific Bible passages beginning in Fourth Grade.

👉The board also gave initial approval to new elementary social studies standards around 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, with a 10-2 vote following hours of deliberation and additional proposed amendments.

👉Democrats Marisa Perez-Diaz of San Antonio and Gustavo Reveles of El Paso voted no. Democrats Staci Childs of Houston, Tiffany Clark of DeSoto, and Rebecca Bell-Metereau of San Marcos left the meeting before the vote.

👉The board reconvened at 9 a.m. this morning, where it heard from TEA Commissioner Mike Morath. They will continue to discuss social studies standards for middle school and high school throughout the day.

👉Final votes are scheduled to take place Friday.

The board meeting also sparked protest at the Capitol Mall on Monday in the form of a mock funeral hosted by the Texas Freedom Network to “mourn the decisions being made inside at the SBOE meeting to strip our students of their religious liberty.” See photos from the event below:

Photos by Jerry White/Texas Freedom Network

It will cost Texans $8 million to fix Bluebonnet Learning

Photo via Shutterstock & Texas Education Agency

In February, the Texas Education Agency received final approval from the State Board of Education to make roughly 4,200 corrections and changes to Bluebonnet Learning. Now, the price Texans will have to pay to make those corrections has been revealed.

According to a contract provided to FOX 4 in Dallas by the state board of education’s Vice Chair Pam Little, more than $8 million of taxpayer money will be spent to fix the errors. The cost falls on taxpayers because the TEA developed the materials using state funding

Bluebonnet Learning, which was created by the TEA and approved by the SBOE in November 2024, 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.

It was pushed through the legislature by Republican lawmakers, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the passage, stating, “The passage of Bluebonnet Learning is a critical step forward to bring students back to the basics of education and provide the best education in the nation.”

While the materials are optional for schools to use, those that adopt it receive extra state funding—$60 per student.

Read more

🎓AAUP to investigate UNT over attacks on academic freedom: The American Association of University Professors has launched an investigation into Texas colleges they say have enabled attacks on academic freedom, including the University of North Texas. (Denton Record-Chronicle)

🏫Why school closures are escalating across Texas: The number of Texas public schools facing closure more than doubled from 2024-2025, and at least 135 public schools have closed or have been approved to close all across Texas since late 2023. (Texas Observer)

🗣️Dual-language instruction improves early academic performance: A new language program for non-native English-speaking students in elementary schools in Pasadena ISD, located outside of Houston, is helping students improve academically. (Houston Chronicle)

For the month of June, we’re celebrating Pride Month by highlighting a new book every week that’s been banned in Texas public schools with LGTBQ+ themes. Our regularly scheduled monthly banned book club will resume in July.

Since The TexEd Report launched in September 2025, we’ve already read a handful of books that fall under this umbrella, including “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” by George M. Johnson and “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe,” by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. This month, we’ve taken a look at “Heartstopper,” a graphic novel by Alice Oseman, “Brave Face,” by Shaun David Hutchinson, and “In the Dream House” by Carmen Maria Machado.

This week, I’d like to spotlight “Forever is Now” by Mariama J. Lockington. The young adult novel was banned in Katy ISD in 2026 and follows Sadie, a Black, bisexual teen who struggles with anxiety and agoraphobia. It also deals with themes of police brutality.

Have you read this book?