texas board of education critical thinking

clock This article was published more than 11 years ago

Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really.

texas board of education critical thinking

(Update: Stephen Colbert’s take; other details)

In the you-can't-make-up-this-stuff department, here's what the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its 2012 platform as part of the section on education:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Yes, you read that right. The party opposes the teaching of “higher order thinking skills” because it believes the purpose is to challenge a student’s “fixed beliefs” and undermine “parental authority.”

It opposes, among other things, early childhood education, sex education, and multicultural education, but supports “school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded.”

When taken with the other parts of the education platform(see below), it seems a fair conclusion that the GOP Party in Texas doesn’t think much of public education. Unfortunately, this notion isn’t limited to the GOP in Texas but is more commonly being seen across the country by some of the most strident of “school reformers.”

It should be noted that after the plank in the platform was ridiculed, Texas GOP Communications Director Chris Elam told TPM.com that it was all a big mistake and that opposition to "critical thinking" wasn't supposed to be included. It can't be easily removed, he said, because the platform had been approved by a party convention and any changes would also have to go through the same process. That clears things up.

You can see Stephen Colbert's hilarious take on this episode by clicking here .

It also seems worth noting that there is some question as to whether critical thinking can actually be taught. University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham argues that it cannot be taught in this 2007 article.

First Willingham defines critical thinking this way: Critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available facts, solving problems, and so forth. Then too, there are specific types of critical thinking that are characteristic of different subject matter: That's what we mean when we refer to "thinking like a scientist" or "thinking like a historian."

Later in the article he writes: After more than 20 years of lamentation, exhortation, and little improvement, maybe it's time to ask a fundamental question: Can critical thinking actually be taught? Decades of cognitive research point to a disappointing answer: not really. People who have sought to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once you learn it, you can apply it in any situation. Research from cognitive science shows that thinking is not that sort of skill.

But of course, that isn’t what the Texas GOP is arguing. It sees “critical thinking” as something subversive. Scary stuff.

Here’s the rest of the education section of the Texas GOP’s 2012 platform:

American Identity Patriotism and Loyalty – We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive. We favor strengthening our common American identity and loyalty instead of political correctness that nurtures alienation among racial and ethnic groups. Students should pledge allegiance to the American and Texas flags daily to instill patriotism.

Basic Standards – We favor improving the quality of education for all students, including those with special needs. We support a return to the traditional basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, and citizenship with sufficient discipline to ensure learning and quality educational assessment.

Bilingual Education – We encourage non-English speaking students to transition to English within three years.

Career and Technology Education (Vocational Education) – We support reinstatement of voluntary career and technology education, including adjusting the 4x4 requirements as needed, without detracting from non-vocational program requirements.

Classroom Discipline –We recommend that local school boards and classroom teachers be given more authority to deal with disciplinary problems. Corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas.

Classroom Expenditures for Staff – We support having 80% of school district payroll expenses of professional staff of a school district be full-time classroom teachers.

College Tuition – We recommend three levels of college tuition: In-state requiring proof of Texas legal citizenship, out-of-state requiring proof of US citizenship, and nonresident legal alien. Non-US citizens should not be eligible for state or federal grants, or loans.

Controversial Theories – We support objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories. We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind.

Early Childhood Development – We believe that parents are best suited to train their children in their early development and oppose mandatory pre-school and Kindergarten. We urge Congress to repeal government-sponsored programs that deal with early childhood development.

Educational Entitlement – We encourage legislation that prohibits enrollment in free public schools of non-citizens unlawfully present in the United States.

Funding of Education – We urge the Legislature to direct expenditures to academics as the first priority.

Higher Education – We support merit-based admissions for all college and university applicants to public institutions. We further support the repeal of the 1997 Texas legislative act commonly known as the Top Ten Percent Rule. All Texas students should be given acceptance priority over out-of-state or foreign students.

Juvenile Daytime Curfew - We strongly oppose Juvenile Daytime Curfews. Additionally, we oppose any official entity from detaining, questioning and/or disciplining our children without the consent of a child’s parent.

Local Control for Education – We support school choice and believe that quality education is best achieved by encouraging parental involvement, protecting parental rights, and maximizing local independent school district control. District superintendents and their employees should be made solely accountable to their locally elected boards. We support sensible consolidation of local school districts. We encourage local ISDs to consider carefully the advantages and disadvantages of accepting federal education money.

No Taxpayer Paid Lobbyists – We support the prohibition of any paid public school employee or contractor to lobby the legislature or the SBOE, unless on an unpaid basis and in an unofficial capacity. No registered lobbyist should be allowed to run for SBOE.

Parental Rights in Education – We believe the right of parents to raise and educate their children is fundamental. Parents have the right to withdraw their child from any specialized program. We urge the Legislature to enact penalties for violation of parental rights.

Sex Education – We recognize parental responsibility and authority regarding sex education. We believe that parents must be given an opportunity to review the material prior to giving their consent. We oppose any sex education other than abstinence until marriage.

Parental School Choice – We encourage the Governor and the Texas Legislature to enact child-centered school funding options which fund the student, not schools or districts, to allow maximum freedom of choice in public, private, or parochial education for all children.

Permanent School Fund – We believe that because the Permanent School Fund is not paid by taxpayers that the principle balance should be safeguarded and not viewed as a source of additional funding for our state budget.

Political Community Organizing in Texas Schools - We believe neither Texas public schools should be used nor their students should be instructed by groups such as SEIU or other community organizers as instruments to promote political agenda during the instructional school day.

Private Education – We believe that parents and legal guardians may choose to educate their children in private schools to include, but not limited to, home schools and parochial schools without government interference, through definition, regulation, accreditation, licensing, or testing.

Religious Freedom in Public Schools – We urge school administrators and officials to inform Texas school students specifically of their First Amendment rights to pray and engage in religious speech, individually or in groups, on school property without government interference. We urge the Legislature to end censorship of discussion of religion in our founding documents and encourage discussing those documents.

School Surveys and Testing – Public schools should be required to obtain written parental consent for student participation in any test or questionnaire that surveys beliefs, feelings, or opinions. Parental rights, including viewing course materials prior to giving consent, should not be infringed.

State Board of Education (SBOE) – We believe that the SBOE should continue to be an elected body consisting of fifteen members. Their responsibilities must include:

— Appointing the Commissioner of Education

— Maintaining constitutional authority over the Permanent School Fund

— Maintaining sole authority over all curricula content and the state adoption of all educational materials. This process must include public hearings.

The SBOE should be minimally staffed out of general revenue.

Textbook Review – Until such time as all texts are required to be approved by the SBOE, each ISD that uses non-SBOE approved instructional materials must verify them as factually and historically correct. Also the ISD board must hold a public hearing on such materials, protect citizen’s right of petition and require compliance with TEC and legislative intent. Local ISD boards must maintain the same standards as the SBOE.

Supporting Military Families in Education – Existing truancy laws conflict with troop deployments. We believe that truancy laws should be amended to allow 5 day absence prior to deployments and R&R. Military dependents by definition will be Texas residents for education purposes.

Traditional Principles in Education – We support school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded and which form the basis of America’s legal, political and economic systems. We support curricula that are heavily weighted on original founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and Founders’ writings.

School Health Care – We urge legislators to prohibit reproductive health care services, including counseling, referrals, and distribution of condoms and contraception through public schools. We support the parents’ right to choose, without penalty, which medications are administered to their minor children. We oppose medical clinics on school property except higher education and health care for students without parental consent.

U.S. Department of Education – Since education is not an enumerated power of the federal government, we believe the Department of Education (DOE) should be abolished.

Zero Tolerance – We believe that zero tolerance policies in schools should specify those items that will not be tolerated at schools. The policy should be posted on ISD websites.

Transparency – We support legislation requiring all school districts to post their expenditures online or made readily available to the public.

Foreign Culture Charter Schools in Texas – We oppose public funding of charter schools which receive money from foreign entities. We demand that these Charter Schools have accountability and transparency to local parents, taxpayers, the State of Texas, as do current public schools, including U.S. citizenship of public school trustees.

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Lawsuit claims company knowingly and illegally dumped cancer-causing waste, hochul pressured to sign ny bill making big oil pay for climate adaptation, palestinians face torture, starvation and sexual violence in israeli prisons, texas gop declares: “no more teaching of ‘critical thinking skills’ in texas public schools“.

The Texas GOP’s hidden curriculum against critical thinking and other educational threats to authoritarianism is now part of its official platform.

The Republican Party of Texas has issued their 2012 political platform and has come out and blatantly opposed critical thinking in public schools throughout the state. If you wonder what took them so long to actually state that publicly, it is really a matter of timing. With irrationality now the norm and an election hovering over the 2012 horizon, the timing of the Republican GOP announcement against “critical thinking” instruction couldn’t be better. It helps gin up their anti-intellectual base.

The Texas GOP’s declarative position against critical thinking in public schools, or any schools, for that matter, is now an official part of their political platform. It is public record in the Republican Party of Texas 2012 platform . With regard to critical thinking, the Republican Party of Texas document states: “Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.” (page 20, Republican Party of Texas, 2012 ).

Yes, challenging beliefs or claims is considered insubordinate, immoral and could lead to rebellion, disobedience or perhaps worse: revolution. For the Republican Party and their followers, thinking is subversive, imagination is a sin and the Republican Party in Texas and elsewhere is working to codify this into public policy. The plutocrats can’t have a working-class citizenry that is asking questions of those in power, be they parents or bosses; instead, the people must be taught the ideology of what is morally acceptable, what rules and regulations to follow. and even more importantly, how to accept and internalize hierarchical authoritarianism. Critical thinking is a direct challenge to the “leaders” and their claims on authority, and any opposition to vertical arrangements is ethically unacceptable to those in power.

Reactionaries have long known that enshrining ignorance and hierarchy in both thought and practice within the school curriculum is essential if the control of young minds is to be accomplished softly and quietly yet profoundly through propaganda and perception management. In the quarters of obedience training, “education” has nothing to do with “schooling” under capitalism.

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For over 20 years, Truthout has been publishing boldly honest journalism like the piece above – stories about and by grassroots activists, reports from the frontlines of social movements, and unapologetic critiques of the systemic forces that shape all of our lives.

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Whatever Happened With Texas’ Anti-CRT Law?

Last year, Texas legislators passed a law restricting how teachers could talk about racism and slavery in classrooms, alongside more than a dozen other states . Educators at the time told Education Week about the questions and concerns they had over how such a law would directly impact their work.

The resulting months have given way to revisions in the law, a failed attempt to update social studies expectations , and mass confusion.

At an August 31 public meeting of the Texas State Board of Education on the proposed new social studies standards, the author of the revised state law, Senate Bill 3, sought to clarify questions of the law’s intent and how teachers can abide by it.

“That bill is not an attempt to sanitize or to teach our history in any other way than the truth—the good, the bad and the ugly—and those difficult things that we’ve been through and the things we’ve overcome,” said Senator Bryan Hughes, a Republican.

Among other things, the law says teachers may not be compelled to discuss controversial public policy issues, and those who do “shall explore that topic objectively and in a manner free from political bias.”

Teachers also cannot be required to teach about slavery and racism as being “anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”

Given the various developments in the state over the future of history and social studies instruction, Education Week wanted to once again hear from educators on how life has been working under the state’s law. We reached out to the teachers we spoke to last year to hear their updates, and sought some new voices.

Moderate or conservative teachers quoted in the earlier story didn’t respond to requests for comment. Conservative organizations such as Texas Values and Innovative Teachers of Texas, which represents teachers seeking an alternative to the state teachers’ association, either could not provide current classroom teacher members for comment or did not respond to requests for comment. A conservative Texas state board member also did not return requests for comment.

Angela Burley, 6th grade world cultures teacher at Dr. Frederick Douglass Todd Sr. Middle School, Dallas

Following the start of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd by police officers, Angela Burley was already contemplating leaving her heterogenous school to move back to a Black community to teach. But the passage of Texas’ law limiting discussion on race and slavery sealed the deal for her.

“I elected to leave an environment where I felt like my teaching certificate would be put in danger,” she said. “Where I felt like I would have to curb the things that I say, or where I felt like I could not allow the students to take conversations where they wanted conversations to go.”

She strives for her students to think critically when it comes to their experiences with systemic racism and racial issues. She wants students to be able to draw connections across history.

In one class, for example, she discussed how many Venezuelans no longer want Nicholas Máduro as president following a disputed election in 2018; many countries have recognized Maduro’s challenger as the rightful winner. Her students then asked if that was similar to how former President Donald Trump didn’t want to leave the presidency. The ensuing conversation she had with her students might not have been possible in another part of town where she felt broaching the topic itself would be discouraged, she said.

Senate Bill 3 emphasizes not requiring instruction on the concept that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.” Yet Burley wonders why that wasn’t law when she was growing up in Texas, when she was discriminated against and made to feel inferior as a Black student.

“Now all of a sudden, because white people are being made to feel uncomfortable because there’s a racial reckoning, now all of a sudden there has to be an issue?” she said.

At her current school she feels supported by administrators, parents, and students to teach the truth about the nation’s and the state’s history and make amends for her own education.

“I never learned anything about the Chinese Exclusion Act, or Mexican Repatriation, or aspects of Jim Crow. I learned nothing about that stuff,” she said. “But that’s exactly what I’m going to teach.”

Joseph Frilot, 6th and 7th grade humanities teacher at IDEA Montopolis College Prep, East Austin

Early discussions among district leaders following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the ensuing national protests left Joseph Frilot feeling hopeful that his school would commit to becoming an anti-racist institution.

But momentum toward new professional development offerings and changes to curriculum halted in the wake of the new Texas law, , Frilot said.

For example, Senate Bill 3 states that a school district may not accept private funding to use a curriculum or provide teacher training on ideas such as that “the advent of slavery in the territory that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States,” the key concept of The New York Times’ 1619 Project.

“Teachers are self censoring themselves and trying to make sure that they follow the guidelines,” Frilot said. “Districts are trying to make sure that they follow those guidelines too, by providing training on the law and so teachers know what the law entails.”

More broadly, Frilot is now concerned about what laws like the one in Texas mean for the U.S. education system as a whole.

“We’ve kind of deviated from becoming an anti-racist education system, to kind of stick to the status quo and be even more fearful to discuss race and current events,” he said. “It takes resources and training for schools to become anti-racist, but with a lot of places, those resources and trainings are kind of depleted at this point.”

Juan Carmona, social studies teacher at Donna High School and dual enrollment instructor at South Texas College, near McAllen

Now that Juan Carmona teaches dual-enrollment courses blending high school and postsecondary students, he feels protected a bit from the Texas law, which focuses on K-12 education.

If anything, the law has led to engaging classroom conversations. He points out to his students that “if this was a regular class, I couldn’t teach you this, but we’re going to talk about this.”

In a regular K-12 class, Carmona said he feels he would be limited in discussing the origins of slavery in the United States and how it was intertwined in the nation’s founding.

“The U.S. progressed as a slave nation, and you can’t extricate slavery and its effects from anything,” he said.

He is, however, concerned for what the law means for the future of social studies instruction and civic engagement among students for course credit. The law states a teacher cannot “require, make part of a course, or award a grade or course credit” for a student’s volunteer work or internship in social policy advocacy.

Carmona is also more broadly concerned over how members of the state school board took the words of conservative organizations over working teachers and scholars when deciding earlier this year to delay revisions to the state’s social studies standards.

“We’re not approaching this as a political thing,” Carmona said. “We’re thinking about what’s best for our state, our children who will later run our state.”

“It belittles what it means to be a teacher when someone who doesn’t know what goes on in a classroom, they’re the ones who are seemingly now controlling what is going on in a classroom,” he concluded.

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Here’s what you need to know about a texas bill that aims to ban critical race theory.

At the beginning of next month, more than 650 new state laws take effect. Leading up to Sept. 1, public radio reporters from across Texas are explaining some of the most high profile and consequential of those laws. Today: HB 3979, which targets teaching critical race theory in schools.

In Texas and across the country , critical race theory (CRT) has become a political lightning rod. Many Republican-led states are working to ban the school of thought from classrooms — even though teachers say they don't even teach it .

This spring, Texas passed two laws taking aim at CRT, including HB 3979. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott didn't think they went far enough, so he included CRT on the agenda for both special legislative sessions, including the one underway right now.

Educators say most people, including critics, don't even know what critical race theory is.

What Is Critical Race Theory?

Nikki Jones teaches African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Jones described CRT as a way to understand how race influenced the historical laws of this country — laws that justified everything from slavery to violence.

"It's a way to see race," Jones said. "To see understandings of race, to see racism, in places where it may not otherwise on the surface of it be apparent."

CRT is a decades-old intellectual movement born out of law schools. It teaches that racism is embedded in systems and structures in the U.S. — such as legal institutions — rather than just being the product of individual prejudice. It is taught in some law schools and universities, but there’s little evidence children and teens are learning the concept in grades K-12.

The Story (And Controversy) Behind The Law

Houston-area Rep. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) says he wrote HB 3979 to help children.

"We need to teach about the ills but you can't blame this generation," Toth said. "Kids are being scapegoated."

Toth's legislation takes on CRT without ever naming it. He says the new law is aimed at teaching complex subjects like slavery and racism without making white children feel guilty.

"You can't teach that one race is better than the other," Toth said, describing what's outlined in HB 3979. "You can’t teach that one gender is better than the other. You can't discriminate either... and say that one race or one gender is responsible for the ills of the past."

Texas history teachers say they don't scapegoat anyone. Critics call the bill and others like it in other states, a political football.

State Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) says Toth's approach could hinder what teachers teach and how they teach it.

He said to consider the prohibition that you cannot teach one race is better than another.

"There were instances in this country where even in the articles of secession in 1861, it was said that the Caucasian race is superior to the African American race,” West said. “That's history. I think that it would be totally unfair if you said you can't teach what history has shown us to be the position in the past."

Teachers worry the law could sweep certain subjects off the table, like slavery and the Civil War.

And school districts, like Fort Worth ISD, are concerned their efforts at attaining and teaching racial equity could be derailed because critics who complain CRT is in the schools often confuse it with a district's racial equity policies.

While the new law takes effect next Wednesday, it's unclear how any presumed violations will be proven or punished.

What Else Is In The Bill?

The legislation, which you can read in full here , directs the State Board of Education to "adopt essential knowledge and skills that develop each student's civic knowledge," including the founding documents of America and writings of the founding fathers.

During the 2021 regular legislative session, House Democrats successfully pushed for that list to include other historical figures, adding more women and people of color. Texas Democrats also added requirements to include "historical documents related to the civic accomplishments of marginalized populations" in social studies curriculum.

HB 3979 prevents schools from offering extra credit or course credit for any activism or lobbying activities and prohibits schools from requiring educators to take any "training, orientation, or therapy that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex."

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Research Guides

Core Curriculum 2014

Critical Thinking
Getting Started
Framing the Core
Personal Responsibility
Social Responsibility
Communication Skills
Empirical & Quantitative Skills
American History Component
Communication Component
Component Area Option -- Skills for Success (Freshman Seminar)
Creative Arts Component
Government/Political Science Component
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Core Objective Definition

Critical Thinking Skills - to include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, and analysis, evaluation and synthesis of information

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ERIC (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window One of the strongest indexes of publications in education.
Professional Development Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window Provides a highly specialized collection of electronic information especially for professional educators, professional librarians and education researchers. This collection offers information on everything from children's health and development to cutting-edge pedagogical theory and practice.
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Critical Thinking: Where to Begin Definitions, tools, and papers from the Critical Thinking Community, which works to "promote essential change in education and society through the cultivation of fairminded critical thinking."
Fundamentals of Critical Thinking A collection of presentations on the role of critical thinking in higher education and strategies for teaching and assessing a wide range of intellectual skills that fall under the general heading of “critical thinking."
Critical Thinking: Concepts & Tools This miniature guide distills the essence of critical thinking into a 23-page guide. It introduces the interrelated complex of critical thinking concepts and principles implicit in the works of Richard Paul and Linda Elder. This guide is widely used at the college level. It can be used as a critical thinking supplement to any textbook or course. The Library copy has call number LB1590.3 E44 2007.
Critical Thinking Competency Standards The critical thinking competency standards articulated in this guide serve as a resource for teachers, curriculum designers, administrators and accrediting bodies. The use of these competencies across the curriculum will ensure that critical thinking is fostered in the teaching of any subject to all students at every grade level. This guide provides a framework for assessing students’ critical thinking abilities. It enables administrators, teachers and faculty at all levels to determine the extent to which students are reasoning critically within any subject or discipline.
Critical Thinking Testing and Assessment Critical Thinking Community's resources and information on assessment of critical thinking.
Critical Thinking VALUE Rubric AAC&U rubric for assessing critical thinking.
Critical Thinking Interview Profile for College Students Instrument to gather information about student views of critical thinking and their development as students and thinkers.
Critical Thinking Interview Profile for Teachers and Faculty Instrument to gather information about faculty views of critical thinking.
Creative Thinking VALUE Rubric AAC&U rubric for assessing creative thinking, related to critical thinking.
Information Literacy VALUE Rubric AAC&U rubric for assessing information literacy skills.
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The Texas Legislature Has Targeted Critical Race Theory, But Is It Being Taught In Public Schools?

The front of A.V. Cato Elementary School

Cracking down on Critical Race Theory is on Gov. Greg Abbott's agenda for the Texas legislative special session that began this week. But Texas educators say they don't teach it, and experts say most people — including critics — don’t even know what is.

At the last Fort Worth Independent School District board meeting on June 22, chants of "USA, USA" and other phrases occasionally interrupted business.

Nearly 100 speakers showed up, many to blast the district for what they deemed an invasion of Critical Race Theory (CRT) into the curriculum.

“I’ve seen critical racist theory enter the school,” speaker Kathryn Pompa said. “CRT is reformulated Marxism, a neo-racist world view that exists to agitate, enable radical identity politics, divide people.”

IMG_6430.JPG A woman with glasses, mouth wide open at a lectern, looking angry, her blurry fist having just pounded the wood under her.

“This cultural ideology is not a solution to unity but a tool for bondage, destruction, and further separation and clearly, the enemy of our day,” added Janna Clark.

Blanca Martinez pounded her fist on the lectern and yelled “CRT is a poison. It’s a poison to the mind. It corrupts!”

Trustees listened quietly.

The Fort Worth school district says it does not teach CRT and never has.

In Texas and across the country , Critical Race Theory has become a political lightning rod. Many Republican-led states are working to ban the school of thought from classrooms — even though teachers say they don’t even teach it.

This spring, Texas passed two laws taking aim at CRT . Republican Gov.Greg Abbott didn’t think they went far enough, so he included CRT on the agenda for the special legislative session that started this week.

Educators say most people, including critics, don’t even know what is.

What Is Critical Race Theory?

“It’s a way to see race,” Jones said. “To see understandings of race, to see racism, in places where it may not otherwise on the surface of it be apparent.”

CRT is a decades-old intellectual movement born out of law schools that teaches that racism is embedded in systems and structures in the U.S. — such as legal institutions — rather than just being the product of individual prejudice. It is taught in some law schools and universities, but there's little evidence children and teens are learning the concept in grades K-12.

One of the Texas laws targeting CRT is House Bill 3979. Houston-area Rep. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) says he wrote it to help children.

“Kids are being scapegoated,” Toth said. “We're seeing Critical Race Theory popping up all over schools.”

Toth’s bill takes on CRT without ever naming it. He said students are being "indoctrinated," describing a situation a constituent from Highland Park, a high-income, predominantly white enclave surrounded by Dallas, shared with him.

“A parent in Highland Park sent me a copy of the book that her 8-year-old son was asked to read. “It's called 'Not My Idea: A Story About Whiteness,'" Toth said. "I thought that the whole idea of stereotyping, racial profiling was a bad thing, and Critical Race Theory goes into profiling white people. They're being taught that crap now in school.”

"You can't discriminate and say that one race or one gender is responsible for the ills of the past"

Highland Park says that’s not true. The school district said 82% of its students are white and less than 1% are Black. Spokesperson Jon Dahlander said the district can’t even find the book Toth mentioned.

“We don’t have the book in any of our school library catalogs,” Dahlander said. “Nor have we been able to find it on any of our campuses.”

Dahlander also said that Highland Park does not teach Critical Race Theory.

“Period. End of story,” Dahlander ephasized.

A Political Battle

Toth's bill tells history teachers how to teach complex subjects that include explaining racism.

“You can't teach that one race is better than the other. You can't teach that one gender is better than the other. You can't discriminate and say that one race or one gender is responsible for the ills of the past," Toth said. "We need to teach about the ills, but you can't blame this generation for those things of the past .”

State Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) says history should be taught equitably and truthfully.

“There were instances in this country, where even in the articles of secession in 1861, it was said that the Caucasian race is superior to the African American race. That’s history," West said. "I think that it would be totally unfair if you said you can’t teach what history has shown us to be the position in the past.”

Senator Nathan Johnson represents Highland Park. He said he sees no need for Toth’s bill because CRT isn’t taught in any Texas school district — no matter what others believe.

“It's not uncommon for people to genuinely believe things that aren't true, particularly when their political leaders tell them they’re true,” Johnson said. “This is a political stunt.”

Gov. Abbott is up for reelection next year, and faces at least two primary opponents further to his right. By doubling down against CRT in the special session, he's joining conservatives across the country in vilifying a curriculum that the majority of K-12 educators in Texas say does not exist.

UC-Berkeley’s Jones says with this legislation, Texas has fallen in line with other states where legislators passed laws that legitimize fear.

“It is not, in fact, true that Critical Race Theory is racist,” Jones said. “It is not, in fact, true that it encourages people to hate this country.”

"Critical Race Theory is being taught to kids about as often as we teach physics to second graders."

At the Fort Worth school board meeting, some people who like what the district’s doing also spoke out.

Fort Worth ISD has created a racial equity plan. Those who defend it say critics are confusing it with CRT.

“Critical Race Theory is being taught to kids about as often as we teach physics to second graders. Children are not being indoctrinated to hate themselves or anyone else," speaker Kent Bradshaw said. "Save that fight for when your kid goes to law school. That’s where they teach CRT.”

Kimberly Williams said she worries how this push will discourage teachers from directly talking racial injustice, and what that could mean for the future.

“As an African American female educator, we know that when racial equity is not consciously addressed, racial inequality is often unconsciously replicated," Williams said.

Audience cheers followed her words.

Got a tip? Email Reporter Bill Zeeble at [email protected] . You can follow him on Twitter @bzeeble .

KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.

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Texas Lawmakers Take Aim At Critical Race Theory

Texas' governor says a new education bill designed to keep critical race theory out of the state's classrooms doesn't go far enough. Texas school districts deny they even teach critical race theory.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Gail Collins

Gail Collins says Texas GOP platform calls for schools to stop teaching “critical thinking”

New York Times columnist Gail Collins’ latest book, "As Texas Goes," takes the state to task for, well, being Texas. And her Aug. 1, 2012, column did pretty much the same. Casting the nomination of Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate as a harbinger of doom, Collins wrote that Texas "does tend to treasure the extreme" in politics, saying, "The current Republican state platform calls for an end to the teaching of ‘critical thinking’ in public schools." Collins is actually a bit late to this party: Major liberal websites launched assaults on this part of the 2012 platform (adopted June 8) as early as June 26, and Comedy Central’s "Colbert Report" satirized it July 17. Mainstream media weighed in, too. A July 9 Washington Post blog entry was headlined "Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really." Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote July 21: "The Texas GOP has set itself explicitly against teaching children to be critical thinkers." Austin American-Statesman opinion columnist Ken Herman reported July 21 that the party’s deputy executive director, Chris Elam, told him the platform subcommittee did not intend to indicate that the party opposed critical thinking skills. We began our research by trying to contact Collins but did not hear from her. Her column gives no information about her claim beyond that single sentence. We pulled the complete wording of the "Knowledge-Based Education" plank from the 2012 platform:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Next, we contacted Elam, who told us by email that party chairman Steve Munisteri had given a good explanation in a July 24 interview with Austin’s KVUE-TV. Munisteri told KVUE, "The platform plank is against a specific type of teaching called 'outcome-based education.' "The reason why critical thinking is mentioned is some places try to disguise the program of outcome-based education and just re-label it as 'critical thinking.' " That’s supported by the wording in the platform. Following the lead of a July 6, 2012, Chronicle of Higher Education blog post on the Texas platform fracas, we looked back to the 2010 platform . Its "Knowledge-Based Education" plank said, "The primary purpose of public schools is to teach critical thinking skills, reading, writing, arithmetic, phonics, history, science, and character … We oppose Outcome-Based Education (OBE) and similar programs." Both platforms support critical thinking when it comes to "controversial theories" such as evolution, which "should be taught as challengeable scientific theories ... Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind." Next, we set out to see if we could determine whether opposing outcome-based education is also, de facto, opposing critical thinking in the larger sense. The debate over outcome-based education caught fire in the 1990s as outcome-based curricula were installed in U.S. school districts. In the Lexis newspaper archive and on the web, we saw a dozen news stories and opinion pieces from as many states -- Texas included -- describing public concern about the new approach. Opponents said the outcome-based approach was antithetical to critical thinking. They claimed it "dumbed down" curricula and influenced students to adopt liberal attitudes because the "outcome" of their studies was predetermined by academia. Supporters claimed it encouraged -- in fact, taught -- critical thinking. Rather than testing students on facts learned by rote memorization, they said, it required children to demonstrate that they had learned to analyze the material. So what the heck is it? The news stories we read indicate outcome-based education takes different forms nearly everywhere it’s applied. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram gave a description in an Oct. 30, 1996, news story about opposition to OBE-like elements in the state’s planned education overhaul:

Under outcome-based education, academic and personal goals are set for students before they can graduate. The program stresses that children are not allowed to fail, so they might be given the same test or report over and over until they do the work satisfactorily. It also may eliminate traditional grades, competitive student assessments and distinct subjects and grade levels.

Methods of implementing outcome-based education include awarding group grades instead of individual grades and eliminating honors programs.

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The "founding father" of OBE, education reformer William Spady, gave an example in an interview for the December 1992/January 1993 issue of Educational Leadership magazine, published by ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development). Asked whether an outcome might be "The student will be able to list the five causes of the Civil War," Spady replied: "No, sorry; that is not an exit outcome. But, ‘Identify and explain the fundamental causes and consequences of the Civil War’ would be an enabling outcome worth pursuing en route to some larger exit outcome." Today, a divide remains between the "OBE teaches kids to think" side and the "OBE suppresses thinking" side. We didn’t find allusions to "critical thinking skills" being used as a code phrase for OBE, but did note that a Feb. 15, 1994, news story in the Dallas Morning News said some educators were avoiding the name "outcomes-based education":

Because of the controversy, many educators are going to great lengths to avoid being associated with outcomes-based education.

"We've always had outcomes," said state school board member Diane Patrick. But "we'd be foolish to call it outcomes-based education right now. That would be very unwise."

Our ruling As Collins says, the Texas GOP platform does state that the party opposes "critical thinking." But Collins leaves out some important context. The platform makes it clear that its opposition is centered on one type of education model: outcome-based education. That’s just the kind of situation addressed in PolitiFact’s definition of Half True: "The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context." By those lights, Collins’ statement is Half True.

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Our Sources

The New York Times , column by Gail Collins, "For God, Texas and golf," Aug. 1, 2012 Austin American-Statesman , column by Ken Herman, "Know your platforms," July 21, 2012 Republican Party of Texas 2012 platform KVUE-TV Austin news story, "Texas GOP chair explains controversial 'critical thinking' platform language," July 24, 2012 Chronicle of Higher Education, blog post "What were they thinking?," July 6, 2012 Republican Party of Texas 2010 platform Fort Worth Star-Telegram news story, "State's curriculum rewrite criticized at meeting," Oct. 30, 1996 ASCD Educational Leadership magazine, "On Outcome-Based Education: A Conversation with Bill Spady," December 1992/January 1993 Dallas Morning News news story, "A thorny road to results; Outcomes-based education seems like such a simple idea but it has created a complicated controversy," Feb. 15, 1994

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Teachers, students speak out against Texas laws targeting critical race theory

Bans on anti-racist education could impact students’ development, teachers say.

For former U.S. Army Capt. Diane Birdwell, teaching world history has always been a personal journey into her family’s heritage.

The 60-year-old teacher often invokes her own family’s history when she teaches her 10th-grade students at a local Dallas public high school. In her maternal ancestry, she says she had family members who served in the Confederate Army. On her father’s side, her ancestors served as part of the Nazi German military.

“I don't shy away from it because I accept the fact that it's part of my family's past,” Birdwell told ABC News. “I deal with the fact that there are relatives in my family history who did things I would not have done and I accept that. I can acknowledge what they did.”

Every school year, when Birdwell teaches her students about WWII, she shows them her uncle’s Ahnenpass book, which he was required to keep under Hitler’s rule as a record proving that he was not of Jewish heritage.

“When we're talking about … the Nuremberg laws that Hitler put in place to separate Jews from German citizens that were Christian, you have a situation where you had to prove your ancestry,” she explained. “With this, you have these factual stamps and information on your family's ancestry, and you had to carry these with you wherever you went.”

PHOTO: Diane Birdwell invokes her family when she teaches her 10th graders about history. One side of her family fought for the Confederacy and the other served in the Nazi German military. Here, she shows her uncle's Ahnenpass book from Nazi Germany.

“I inherited this and I show it in class to make sure they understand that this all really happened. The Holocaust was real, and don't think for a second it didn't happen,” she added. “Hopefully, our country can move and improve when you personalize history and that's what I'm trying to get them to do.”

Although these discussions are sometimes uncomfortable, the Dallas-based teacher said that talking about past injustices is necessary to prevent history from repeating itself.

However, she may soon have to change her candid teaching style if a GOP-led bill in Texas is voted into law. The current version of the state’s Senate Bill 3 would remove a mandate for educators to teach historic moments of slavery, as well as the Chicano movements, women’s suffrage and civil rights.

MORE: 'Anti-democratic': Some teachers blast new laws targeting discussions of race in schools

One of the most controversial pieces of the proposal would remove a requirement to teach students that the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy is morally wrong.

Critics of SB 3 say the bill attempts to legislate education policy to ban teaching anti-racism in K-12 schools. They say the educational efforts in these grades have been politicized and conflated as critical race theory , a higher education academic framework created over 40 years ago to explore how a history of racism and white supremacy may still be embedded in U.S. institutions, including the legal system.

“What legal scholars and their students did was they turned to the law, they turned to institutions, they turned to policies to understand how discrimination was perpetuated by these institutions, by these structures, by these policies, in order to make sense of continuing inequality,” Leah Wright Rigueur, an associate professor of American history at Brandeis University, told ABC News.

MORE: Critical race theory in the classroom: Understanding the debate

While Republican state lawmakers are working to pass prohibitions, critical race theory is not currently a part of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills requirements, which sets the requirements for the K-12 curriculums as mandated by the state Board of Education.

Texas is now one of 26 states that have proposed or passed laws restricting or banning classroom discussions on concepts relating to race and racism, which many Republican lawmakers say are divisive.

While many had come to accept critical race theory as a new way to understand the impacts of racism, former President Donald Trump helped spark debate over its legitimacy during his reelection campaign, and Republicans have lobbied against it ever since.

During a speech announcing his 1776 Commission in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 17, 2020, Trump said that "students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory. This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation.”

Trump went on to sign an executive order titled “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” which banned anti-racist, racial and sexual sensitivity trainings for federal employees. He also denounced the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project by New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, which focused on the lasting impact of slavery in the U.S.

President Joe Biden has since reversed the executive order, saying he will prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion within his administration.

Battle in the school board

School boards across the country are holding meetings to debate critical race theory, with some parents accusing teachers of having a political agenda in the classroom. Politicians, parents and students are all weighing in on the debate over what children should learn and who gets to make that decision.

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) is traditionally responsible for creating the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills — also known as TEKS — which is a basic curriculum for K-12 public education. Marisa Perez-Diaz has been a member of the SBOE since 2013, representing District 3, which includes the San Antonio region.

“This is the first time I've experienced this where the legislature is directly impacting the work that the State Board of Education is responsible for doing and dictating what needs to be taught and what needs to be included in schools. That's never happened and that should never happen,” Perez-Diaz said.

PHOTO: Marisa Perez-Diaz has been on the Texas state board of education since 2013.

This week, she facilitated a meeting with students and educators across Texas to discuss recent education bills proposed or passed in the state. Burbank High School teacher Luke Amphlett was one of the participants.

“It's not accidental that this is happening at the moment of the largest multiracial uprising against police brutality in history,” he said. “This is happening in a moment where we're seeing the demographics of Texas shifting and a majority of students of color now in Texas schools.”

Alejo Pena Soto, a recent graduate of Jefferson High School in the San Antonio Independent School District, says SB 3 is “just ignorant in the sense that it's forgetting a lot of the history of where education comes from.”

That sentiment is one Perez-Diaz identifies with. She said she wants her four children to grow up knowing how their ancestors contributed to the fabric of this country.

“The work of understanding our histories is also very personal to me, because as a Latina, as a Mexican-American in Texas, I wasn't exposed to my history,” she said. “All I had to learn was what was passed down in oral history from my family.”

Perez-Diaz is a fourth-generation Mexican American and the youngest person to be a member of the SBOE. She’s also the first in her family to graduate college and an alumnus of Texas’ public school education.

“I am proud to be a Texan. I'm not proud of the policy and the laws that come out of Texas,” she said.

Texas has one of the fastest growing populations in the U.S. and more than half of the state’s student population is Hispanic.

PHOTO: Luke Amphlett, a high school teacher in Burbank, Texas, speaks during a group discussion about Texas' education legislation.

Perez-Diaz says critical race theory has become the new catchphrase for conversations about race and diversity not just inside the classrooms but outside them, too. She says much of the fear surrounding it is baseless.

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“No, critical race theory is not being taught in K-12 education,” she said. “It is a higher education framework that is engaged typically at the graduate level.”

“There are foundational issues in U.S. history that are very much connected to racial inequity, segregation, redlining, [and] all of those issues are not critical race theory,” she added. “That's history. That's our country's history.”

Texas State Rep. Steve Toth believes that history is important for students to learn, but he says the methods for teaching it should remain traditional.

“I think it's very simple: you teach [that] the past is the past,” he said. “I was taught in school about the Civil War. I was taught about slavery. I was taught about Jim Crow. But I wasn't blamed for it. Slavery was a sin of our past. Jim Crow is a sin of our past.”

Toth and other Republican lawmakers are pushing to ban critical race theory in K-12 public and charter schools, and threatening to take funding away if teachers are caught teaching it. He is the author of Texas House Bill 3979, one of the first of Texas’ bills that aimed to stop critical race theory from being used in classrooms. It was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in June and will take effect in September.

“We have had dozens and dozens of teachers [who] called saying that they do not want to teach critical race theory in Texas classrooms, and this is [a] response to that,” he said.

PHOTO: Texas State Rep. Steve Toth is the author of HB 3979, one of the first laws that aimed to stop critical race theory from being used in classrooms.

One of the controversial pieces of Toth’s bill requires teachers to abstain from conversations that might lead to someone feeling “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.”

“If you want to say that the United States is still a systemic racist nation, that's a lie. If you want to say that there is racism in our land, that's the truth. Absolutely true,” Toth said.

Another section of his bill prohibits teachers from feeling compelled to discuss current events with students, saying that if it comes up, they must explore the news from “diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”

“I honestly don't know how we responsibly teach social studies or civics education without engaging in conversations about current events,” Perez-Diaz said. “Our students, our scholars across the country, leave the classroom and experience the world as it is, right. So then, how do we come into the classroom and we expect them to ignore all of that noise outside when they have a lot of questions?”

For students, American history is personal.

For students like 14-year-old Chris Johnson of Aledo, Texas, our nation’s racist past is still a reality that haunts his daily life. Earlier this year, Chris and a fellow Black student were targeted by classmates who set up a “slave auction” on Snapchat.

That virtual post was initially called “n----- auction,” he said, adding that his classmates pretended to sell them: one for $100 and the other for $1.

Chris’ mom, Mioshi Johnson, said she reported the incident to the school administrators immediately. The school disciplined the students involved and outlined multiple steps to address the problem in the community. But she said they called the incident “cyber bullying,” not “racism.”

“It made it so that people didn't know what really happened. So there was no conversation about how egregious it was,” Johnson said. “There was no conversation about the direct racism that it was.”

Susan K. Bohn, Ed.D., the superintendent of Aledo Independent School District, said in a statement to parents, “I am deeply sorry that a few of our students engaged in racial harassment of two of our students of color. … It was totally unacceptable to all of us, and it should not have happened.”

Chris shared his painful story at a local school board meeting on April 19.

“I spoke up to stand up for myself and every other kid in Aledo to just show them that's not OK and we shouldn't be treated different,” he said.

“They weren't listening to what people were saying, so they needed to hear firsthand from the people that were affected by it,” he said. “If the government, politicians and even the school board would just listen to us, they would understand that we have every right to be a part of the solution.”

Chris says he wants his school district to take action and to make sure an incident like the one he went through never happens again.

“We're not just going to sit back. … We need to actually see them take initiative and change,” he said.

Both he and his mother agree that having honest dialogues about racism is crucial to becoming anti-racist.

“The division comes from not knowing, not being aware, not having someone to tell you or teach you,” she said. “When you take that away, you have instances of teenage boys saying slave trade, slave auction, slave farm because no one has taught them.”

Johnson said she believes that incorporating ideas of critical race theory into a curriculum gives students a fuller picture of their history.

“I don't see critical race theory as being something terrible. I don't see it being a blame game — ‘shame-you’ — type of theory. I believe that it's telling the whole entire story; parts of the story that people aren't learning anymore [and] will probably never hear about if people aren't teaching it.” she said. “When you know the whole story from the history to the present, it kind of brings it full circle to you.”

Athena Tseng, a 15-year-old high school junior in Frisco, Texas is a member of Diversify Your Narrative, an organization that works to incorporate the voices of Black, indigenous and other people of color into classroom curriculums. She was born in Arizona but her family is originally from Taiwan.

“I barely ever see history about my heritage, or anything in my classes, even in the books we read,” Tseng said. “To have diverse representation in our history and literature classes, or just overall, really helps with even just people of color being more comfortable in their skin.”

PHOTO: Texas high-school junior Athena Tseng is a member of "Diversify your Narrative," an organization working to incorporate Black, indigenous and people of color voices in classroom curriculums.

“I think if you're not exposed to … other cultures ... then I don't think people are going to go out of their way to do that and learn and grow,” she added.

As state lawmakers, parents and school board officials battle over how to teach American history, Birdwell says that opponents of critical race theory should consider how prohibitions in history education could impact students’ critical thinking development.

“These opponents of critical race theory or diversity education, what they're saying is they don't trust their children,” Birdwell said. “I think they really fear that their kids might pick up that their ancestors did some bad things. They might pick up that there is still a legacy in this country of racism and that we need to do something about it.”

On Aug. 3, Rep. James White, the only Black Republican State House member, submitted a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asking him to review the constitutionality of critical race theory education and anti-racism teaching.

Regardless of whether the latest bill, Texas SB 3, passes, Paxton's opinion could set a precedent for future legislation that could potentially impact diversity, equity and inclusivity training efforts in education as well as in other public agencies.

In the meantime, Birdwell says she will continue to follow her lesson plans as usual. She says history needs to come with context: facts alone are not enough.

“If you have to confront that racism of the past, then white citizens are going to have to confront that their families were alive when it happened,” she said. “That doesn't make [them] themselves bad people. It just means: accept that in the past, some of our stuff is not pleasant to learn or talk about.”

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Texas GOP vs. Critical Thinking

By Scott Jaschik

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The 2012 platform of the Texas Republican Party contains a number of provisions raising eyebrows among Texas academics. For instance, the platform says, "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning), which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." With regard to college tuition, the platform wants to end the policy (endorsed by Governor Rick Perry in the Republican primaries) of granting in-state tuition rates to some students who lack the legal documentation to live in the United States. And the platform wants "merit-based" admissions for all public colleges, and seeks to eliminate the "10 percent" plan -- which admits students from the top 10 percent of high school classes and which has helped to diversify Texas colleges.

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Texas’ divisive bill limiting how students learn about current events and historic racism passed by Senate

The bill aims to ban critical race theory in public and open-enrollment charter schools. Supporters say it merely ensures students aren't taught that one race or gender is superior to another. Critics say it limits how race in America is taught.

Students leave the classroom to work in the computer lab at Mata Intermediate School.

After hours of passionate debate about how Texas teachers can instruct school children about America’s history of subjugating people of color, the state Senate early Saturday morning advanced a new version of a controversial bill aimed at banning critical race theory in public and open-enrollment charter schools.

Sen. Bryan Hughes , R-Mineola, introduced a reworked version of House Bill 3979 that also requires the State Board of Education to develop new state standards for civics education with a corresponding teacher training program to start in the 2022-23 school year. The Senate approved the bill in an 18-13 vote over opposition from educators, school advocacy groups and senators of color who worry it limits necessary conversation about the roles race and racism play in U.S. history.

The bill now heads back to the Texas House, which can either accept the Senate’s changes or call for a conference committee made up of members from both chambers to iron out their differences.

The Senate-approved version revives specific essential curriculum standards that students are required to understand, including the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers. But it stripped more than two dozen requirements to study the writings or stories of multiple women and people of color that were also previously approved by the House, despite attempts by Democratic senators to reinstate some of those materials in the bill.

The Senate did vote to include the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, the 13th 14th and 19th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the complexity of the relationship between Texas and Mexico to the list of required instruction.

Yet the most controversial aspects of the bill remain, including that teachers must explore current events from multiple positions without giving “deference to any one perspective.” It also bars students from getting course credit for civic engagement efforts, including lobbying for legislation or other types of political activism.

Educators, historians and school advocacy groups who fiercely oppose the bill remained unswayed by arguments that the bill is merely meant to ensure students are taught that one race or gender is not superior to another.

“Giving equal weight to all sides concerning current events would mean that the El Paso terrorist ideology would have to be given equal weight to the idea that racism is wrong,” said Trinidad Gonzales, a history professor and assistant chair of the dual enrollment program at South Texas College. “That is the problem, white supremacy would be ignored or given deference if addressed. That is the problem with the bill.”

Hughes denied that the bill would require teachers give moral equivalency to perpetrators of horrific violence.

Sen. Brandon Creighton , R-Conroe, who sponsored the Senate version of the bill, said in a statement to the Tribune that Texas schools should emphasize “traditional history, focusing on the ideas that make our country great and the story of how our country has risen to meet those ideals.”

But Sen. Royce West , D-Dallas, raised concerns on the Senate floor that the historical documents required in the bill only reflect the priorities of white senators.

“There were documents that were chosen, not by Hispanics, not by African Americans in this body, but by Anglos,” he said. “No input from us in terms of what founding documents should in fact be considered by all children in this state.”

Hughes also told members there have been instances in various school districts where parents have raised concerns about lessons where students have been taught one race is inherently superior to another. He pointed to a particular instance in Highland Park Independent School District where parents were concerned about a book called Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness.

“We do have teaching now that we want to get out that one race or sex is inherently superior to another, or the individual by virtue of the individual's race or sex is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” Hughes said. “I think we agree we don't want that taught in schools. That’s why we need this bill.”

But Sen. Borris Miles , D-Houston, pushed back against that premise, reading a passage from the book’s author about its intent to help children dismantle white supremacy.

"My point is that we cannot just pick and choose what we are going to teach as history and expect to change things and make things better,” Miles said. “It doesn’t work that way. This bill is eliminating and excluding some things, and including what you want to say."

Educators also worry the legislation will change how teachers can engage students in hard, but important, conversations about American current events that teachers often use to trace back to historical events.

“Kids get engaged and kids want to dig into your class when they get the relevance and they have some buy-in,” said Jocelyn Foshay, a Dallas Independent School District middle school teacher.

The bill, which mirrors legislation making its way through state legislatures across the country, has been coined the Critical Race Theory bill, though neither the House or Senate versions explicitly mention the academic discipline, which studies the way race and racism has impacted America’s legal and social systems.

The latest version of the bill also reintroduced an explicit ban of the teaching of The New York Times’ 1619 Project , which examines U.S. history from the date when enslaved people first arrived on American soil, marking that year as the country’s foundational date. That 2019 work from journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize and was recently thrust back into the national spotlight after the University of North Carolina did not grant her tenure after conserative criticism of her work.

“To suggest that America is so racist at its core to be irredeemable and to suggest that people based on the color of their skin can never overcome biases and can never treat each other fairly, that’s a real problem,” Hughes said of the project.

Educators also worry the bill language is too vague and will allow students and parents to potentially use the legislation against them if they disagree with how they’re teaching history curriculum, regardless of the primary sources and historical texts teachers use to back up their lessons. It’s also unclear who would enforce these requirements and how schools or districts would handle these issues.

“It makes it so open for anyone to interpret it the way they want to interpret it,” said Juan Carmona, a history teacher in the Rio Grande Valley town of Donna

He sees this bill as a pushback to including more historical voices and perspectives in the teaching of history. In recent years, Texas started to offer Mexican American and African American studies courses to all high school students.

Over the past year, the phrase “critical race theory” has turned into a Republican rallying cry in an apparent pushback against increased conversations about diversity and inclusion and unpacking implicit bias.

This week, 20 state attorneys general sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and expressed concern with critical race theory and, specifically, the 1619 Project. The letter says critical race theory analyzes history through “the narrow prism of race.”

Georgina Perez, who serves on the State Board of Education, slammed the bill and its supporters, saying they are using buzzwords for political gain rather than to improve education.

“They have no idea what critical race theory is, what it does, who the founders are. They've never read a book, much less a paragraph on it,” said Perez. “I understand that maybe some white people are uncomfortable. Well, dammit, when Black people were being lynched, they sure as hell weren't comfortable. Native Americans being removed from their land and Mexican Americans being shot to death in the middle of the night, that shit wasn't comfortable either.”

Erin Douglas contributed to this story.

Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here .

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Here's how to give your feedback on Texas Education Agency's proposed curriculum for public school

Education officials in Texas are looking to standardize what students are taught.

The Texas Education Agency has released thousands of pages of recommended curricula for public schools across the state.

On the TEA's website , you can give feedback on whether you think this curriculum is fair and factual from Monday, June 3, until Friday, Aug. 16.

This is a brand new curriculum that comes from a law passed last year.

But the idea is familiar.

Decades ago, schools in Texas operated based on state guidelines, and then the control moved to local districts. Now, it looks like there's a power shift back to the state having control.

ABC13 spoke with Duncan Klussmann, a University of Houston asst. professor who formerly served as superintendent of Spring Branch ISD.

"Textbook wars in Texas are not new. They go way back to the 60s, really when we had many more of these issues when the state completely controlled what you got," Klussmann explained.

Multiple groups have criticized the proposed curriculum because the language arts section includes several Biblical teachings and references. State leaders have argued that other religious teachings are also included.

Gov. Greg Abbott has praised this curriculum, saying, in order to improve scores in math and reading, curriculum needs to be high quality and the same at all school districts in the state.

"I understand that a lot of people have distrust. I understand that a lot of people may scroll social media and they may see buzz words on articles and they are afraid that their child is going to be indoctrinated if they come to school," Staci Childs, the state Board of Education member representing Houston and parts of Galveston County, said. "Well, I can assure you as long as I'm on the state board of education that we're not going to let that happen, but we still need the public to be part of that process so we can get insight on how to make the curriculum more reflective of all the students."

Schools are not required to use the curriculum.

But, if they do, they will get up to $60 per student in additional state funding.

For more on this story, follow Pooja Lodhia on Facebook , X and Instagram .

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Texas Education Agency outlines South Texas figures in new reading textbooks

Directed by the Texas Legislature to create reading and math textbooks for Texas schools, the Texas Education Agency has unveiled materials that highlight South Texas history.

Last week, the TEA unveiled new Texas Open Education Resources textbooks. On Friday, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath visited Corpus Christi to highlight parts of the materials that reference veteran and civil rights icon Dr. Hector P. Garcia , jazz musician James Polk and Driscoll Children's Hospital founder Clara Driscoll.

Texas Rep. Todd Hunter, who represents Aransas and part of Nueces counties, praised the inclusion of South Texas history in the reading materials.

"It's been too long, but it's never too late," Hunter said.

In 2023, House Bill 1605 directed the TEA to develop a set of state-owned instructional materials specifically designed to support student learning and close achievement gaps. These "open" textbooks will be owned by the state and available free to anyone.

The State Board of Education is currently tasked with reviewing high-quality instructional materials, including the Open Education Resources, as well as 142 products submitted by 25 other publishers. In addition to a professional review process, the public has the opportunity to review the materials and submit feedback through Aug. 16.

The state board will hold public hearings June 25-28 and Sept. 10-13. The public can also access materials and give feedback online at https://sboe.texas.gov/state-board-of-education/imra.

Schools would not be required to use the state-approved lessons.

School systems that purchase approved "high-quality instructional materials" will receive $40 per student per year from the state. School systems that use the Texas OER textbooks can also get $20 per student to cover printing costs. Anyone will be able to download an OER textbook for free.

Morath, who leads the Texas Education Agency, said that there is a correlation in Texas between the schools with the lowest percentages of poverty and the best reading performance.

"You can see quite clearly the higher the density of poverty in the school, the lower the level of reading proficiency," Morath said. "What you can also see though is that there are very clear outliers. Demography is not destiny."

Morath said that curriculum is one of the pieces that can help improve student performance. To improve reading performance, students need to learn phonics and they need to be exposed to complex vocabulary, Morath said.

A student needs to learn how to sound out a word, but they also have to know what that word means, he said.

For the past several years, the state has been piloting elementary reading instructional material that includes this approach in school districts like Temple ISD and Lubbock ISD.

Morath said that Lubbock ISD saw a jump in reading performance, including a "disproportionate benefit" for low-income students and Black and Hispanic students, groups that have historically had lower levels of reading performance.

The Texas Tribune and The 74 have reported that the potential new TEA-developed educational materials include lessons that reference Biblical stories.

The kindergarten OER units include lessons on nursery rhymes, the five senses, fairy tales and folk tales, plants and how they grow, farms, weather, art, serving neighbors and the community and historical topics like colonial and Native Americans, kings and queens and American symbols and historical figures.

First grade materials cover astronomy, animals and habitats, the human body, stories from across the world, American westward expansion, American independence and Aztec, Maya and Inca civilizations.

Second graders learn about ancient Greeks, the War of 1812, cycles in nature, insects, the U.S. Civil War, nutrition, aviation, American immigration and people who fought for civil rights.

Third graders learn about animal classification, classic tales, the human body, ancient Rome, light and sound, astronomy, Native American cultures, early explorations of America, colonial America and jazz.

Fourth graders learn about reading personal narratives, the art of invention, contemporary fiction, the Middle Ages, the American Revolution, poetry, geology, industry in energy and the novel "Number the Stars."

Fifth graders learn about personal narratives, the Renaissance, early American civilizations, the novel "Don Quixote", poetry, William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", World War II, chemical matter, Juneteenth and the novel "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

The second grade "Fighting for a Cause" unit includes lessons focused on Dr. Hector P. Garcia. The unit also includes non-violence, the Biblical figure Esther, William Penn, William Wilberforce, Rosa Parks, abolitionists, the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Jackie Robinson, Sierra Leonean engineer Kelvin Doe and young Americans who have advocated for bees and butterflies.

The Garcia lesson highlights Garcia's history as a doctor, soldier and a leader who advocated for education, veterans and people in need of medical care. The American GI Forum is mentioned, as is Garcia's efforts to ensure Private Felix Longoria was honored with a burial in Arlington National Cemetery.

"This is a story that Texans will know because we've embedded it in statewide curriculum," Morath said.

Cecilia Garcia Akers, Dr. Hector P. Garcia's daughter, has been advocating for her father's legacy for years. Garcia has appeared in Texas history textbooks for close to 15 years, but in 2021, a bill was proposed in the Texas Legislature that would have removed Garcia and other Hispanic and Black figures from the mandatory history curriculum.

The move was unsuccessful, and three years later, Garcia Akers is proud to see her father centered in a state-designed curriculum.

"We cannot close our eyes to what's going on," she said.

James Polk, a native of Corpus Christi, was a renowned jazz musician. A third grade unit on jazz covers Polk.

"We need to make sure children are reading interesting material ... that has challenging material," Morath said. "This is how we will grow our children in reading comprehension and knowledge of the world around them. They need to read about our history, the things we are proud of and the things that we have overcome."

A kindergarten unit on ethics also mentions the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in a lesson on military service.

For fourth graders, the lessons include personal narratives, including one by Clara Driscoll. Driscoll grew up in the Corpus Christi area and is known as the "Savior of the Alamo" for her role in protecting the historic site.

Materials are also available in Spanish to support dual language and bilingual learners.

If approved, the materials will be available for teachers and students in 2025-26.

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After publishing an article critical of Israel, Columbia Law Review’s website is shut down by board

FILE - A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York. The student-run legal journal, Columbia Law Review, was taken offline Monday, June 3, 2024, after its board of directors objected to the publication of an article that accused Israel of genocide. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, Pool, File)

FILE - Protesters demonstrate against the war in Gaza outside the entrance to the campus of Columbia University, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York. The student-run legal journal, Columbia Law Review, was taken offline Monday, June 3, 2024, after its board of directors objected to the publication of an article that accused Israel of genocide. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

FILE - Police stand guard as demonstrators chant slogans outside the Columbia University campus, on April 18, 2024, in New York. The student-run legal journal, Columbia Law Review, was taken offline Monday, June 3, 2024, after its board of directors objected to the publication of an article that accused Israel of genocide. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

FILE - Student protesters camp on the campus of Columbia University, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York. The student-run legal journal, Columbia Law Review, was taken offline Monday, June 3, 2024, after its board of directors objected to the publication of an article that accused Israel of genocide. (Pool Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Student editors at the Columbia Law Review say they were pressured by the journal’s board of directors to halt publication of an academic article written by a Palestinian human rights lawyer that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and upholding an apartheid regime.

When the editors refused the request and published the piece Monday morning, the board — made up of faculty and alumni from Columbia University’s law school — shut down the law review’s website entirely. It remained offline Tuesday evening, a static homepage informing visitors the domain “is under maintenance.”

The episode at one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious legal journals marks the latest flashpoint in an ongoing debate about academic speech that has deeply divided students, staff and college administrators since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Several editors at the Columbia Law Review described the board’s intervention as an unprecedented breach of editorial independence at the periodical, which is run by students at Columbia Law School. The board of directors oversees the nonprofit’s finances but has historically played no role in selecting pieces.

A seagull flies in front of Pope Francis during his appearance at his studiio's window overlooking St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Sunday, June 9, 2024, where faithful and pilgrims gathered for the traditional Sunday's blessing at the end of the Angelus prayer. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

In a letter sent to student editors Tuesday and shared with The Associated Press, the board of directors said it was concerned that the article, titled “Nakba as a Legal Concept,” had not gone through the “usual processes of review or selection for articles at the Law Review, and in particular that a number of student editors had been unaware of its existence.”

“In order to preserve the status quo and provide student editors some window of opportunity to review the piece, as well as provide time for the Law Review to determine how to proceed, we temporarily suspended the website,” the letter continued.

Those involved in soliciting and editing the piece said they had followed a rigorous review process, even as they acknowledged taking steps to forestall expected blowback by limiting the number of students aware of the article.

In the piece, Rabea Eghbariah, a Harvard doctoral candidate, accuses Israel of a litany of “crimes against humanity,” arguing for a new legal framework to “encapsulate the ongoing structure of subjugation in Palestine and derive a legal formulation of the Palestinian condition.”

Eghbariah said in a text message that the suspension of the law journal’s website should be seen as “a microcosm of a broader authoritarian repression taking place across U.S. campuses.”

Editors said they voted overwhelmingly in December to commission a piece on Palestinian legal issues, then formed a smaller committee — open to all of the publication’s editorial leadership — that ultimately accepted Eghbariah’s article. He had submitted an earlier version of the article to the Harvard Law Review, which the publication later elected not to publish amid internal backlash, according to a report in The Intercept .

Anticipating similar controversy and worried about a leak of the draft, the committee of editors working on the article did not upload it to a server that is visible to the broader membership of the law journal and to some administrators. The piece was not shared until Sunday with the full staff of the Columbia Law Review — something that editorial staffers said was not uncommon.

“We’ve never circulated a particular article in advance,” said Sohum Pal, an articles editor at the publication. “So the idea that this is all over a process concern is a total lie. It’s very transparently content based.”

In their letter to students, the board of directors said student editors who didn’t work on the piece should have been given an opportunity to read it and raise concerns.

“Whatever your views of this piece, it will clearly be controversial and potentially have an impact on all associated with the Review,” they wrote.

Those involved in the publishing of the article said they heard from a small group of students over the weekend who expressed concerns about threats to their careers and safety if it were to be published.

Some alluded to trucks that circled Columbia and other campuses following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, labeling students as antisemites for their past or current affiliation with groups seen as hostile to Israel.

The letter from the board also suggested that a statement be appended to the piece stating the article had not been subject to a standard review process or made available for all student editors to read ahead of time.

Erika Lopez, an editor who worked on the piece, said many students were adamantly opposed to the idea, calling it “completely false to imply that we didn’t follow the standard process.”

She said student editors had spoken regularly since they began receiving pushback from the board on Sunday and remained firmly in support of the piece.

When they learned the website had been shuttered Monday morning, they quickly uploaded Eghbariah’s article to a publicly accessible website . It has since spread widely across social media.

“It’s really ironic that this piece probably got more attention than anything we normally published,” Lopez added, “even after they nuked the website.”

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