Texas correcting 4,200 errors in controversial Bluebonnet curriculum

Texas will correct more than 4,200 errors in the controversial, state-written Bluebonnet curriculum, which was rolled out in public schools this year, the state board of education ruled on Wednesday. 

The fixes, which range from missing commas and improperly licensed images to incorrect answer keys and factual errors, were submitted by the Texas Education Agency, which wrote and published the curriculum as part of Texas’ push for state-issued “high-quality” instructional materials.

Board members approved the changes, but not before expressing frustration about the “unprecedented” number of errors. Several raised concerns that they hadn’t been caught in the initial approval process and that taxpayers would be on the hook for the costs of reprinting the updated material.  

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“I’m very concerned about our review process,” said Will Hickman, Republican of Houston. “It feels like we’ve done something wrong, that we have high-quality instructional materials that were approved by us, but then they are coming back with 4,200-plus corrections.”

The Republican-led board voted 8-6 to approve the changes, with support from most of the board’s conservatives. Republican Evelyn Brooks of Frisco joined Democrats to oppose them, and Hickman did not take a vote.

Bluebonnet has been highly controversial since its adoption two years ago. Portions of the materials integrate Biblical teachings and are viewed by some critics as part of a national effort to return Christianity and prayer into public schools. 

Texas is also one of the only states in the country to write and print its own textbooks in addition to setting guidelines for private publishers to follow. The Texas Education Agency gained that power through a new law approved by the state Legislature in 2023 that aimed to increase rigor in classrooms and give teachers more ready-made lesson plans. 

The state-issued materials are optional, but public school districts receive a financial incentive if they adopt them, which critics say represents an effort to increase top-down control of classroom instruction. Just under one-third of the roughly 1,200 districts statewide voted to adopt Bluebonnet this school year. 

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TEA has described the factual errors as “minimal.” Around a quarter of the changes involve updating URL links, and some are duplicative because they are found across multiple components, like teacher instructions, student workbooks and answer keys.

Nicholas Keith, director of the agency’s publishing division, said in an interview before the vote that the fixes are part of the natural cycle of publishing and updating new materials. Bluebonnet is also more expansive than other textbooks, with more than 200,000 pages of content for  elementary-age reading and math, he noted. 

“We take district feedback very seriously, and we listen to teachers very closely, and that resulted in quite a few of the changes that we submitted,” Keith said. “We just want to make sure that they’ve got the best materials that they can have.”

Several SBOE members complained that they had not heard direct testimony from Keith on the requested fixes. The agency declined to make Keith available for public testimony, saying it was necessary to retain a firewall between the agency’s arms for publishing and review. The state board does not have the power to compel any publisher, including a state employee, to appear for testimony, according to board chair Aaron Kinsey.

Since the TEA published the materials, Texas taxpayers are on the hook for the cost of the updates. TEA representative Colin Dempsey declined to say under questioning from members on Wednesday how much reprinting materials would cost, saying the estimates would be compiled at a later date. The agency will fully cover the school districts’ costs to purchase the corrected materials. 

“An error is an error, and it concerns me that we are approving these without going through our suitability or quality process,” said Pam Little, a North Texas Republican. “And it’s a cost on the taxpayer.”

For Austin Democrat Rebecca Bell-Meterau, the Bluebonnet curriculum’s problems run deeper than the fixes being made Wednesday. 

“So much of this is just designed to be propaganda against socialism and communism,” Bell-Metereau told her fellow members. “It gives the impression that all of Europe and the UK and Canada must be under some sort of dictatorship.”