Hundreds of corrections are being issued for Texas’ Bible-infused public-school curriculum after the “Bluebonnet” materials were introduced in classrooms, with the Texas State Board of Education approving the updated package on Wednesday in a vote of 8-6. The curriculum is optional for districts to adopt, though schools that use it receive additional funding, and it had drawn pushback in 2024 when it was approved.
The “Bluebonnet” textbook, designed by the Texas Education Agency, was approved despite concerns from religious scholars that it favored Christianity over other faith traditions and pushback from advocacy groups that argued the materials prioritized preaching over teaching. While the latest board action focused on corrections identified after the curriculum was used, board members questioned how many errors had been found and what the mistakes could mean for students.
Board member Tiffany Clark, a Democrat, told fellow members that her concern was whether the board had “failed students this school year” by approving the product as it was used in classrooms. Aaron Kinsey, the Republican board chair, responded by asking Clark whether she was suggesting that correcting “something seemingly trivial like copyright issues” could mean “we failed our students and they are not going to pass” Texas’ annual standardized test.
Clark argued that even small mistakes can have consequences, saying, “If we have been teaching incorrectly this is going to have an impact.” Board member Pam Little, a Republican, said she agreed that errors needed to be handled, adding: “I understand that some of these errors are minimal, some of them are for clarity and some of them are for accuracy. But still, an error is an error.”
Colin Dempsey, a Texas Education Agency official who helps organize the instructional material review process, acknowledged the “high number of updates” needed but said factual errors were “minimal,” while not providing an exact number. Board members said the corrections package involved more than 4,000 corrections, but Texas Education Agency spokesperson Jake Kobersky said that approximately 1,900 changes were made and that the total included duplicate corrections spread across the teacher guide, student workbook and other documents.
Kobersky said most of the updates were “proactive in response to teacher feedback or grammatical fixes, not a result of factual errors.” He said that it was unclear how many districts had adopted the curriculum for the current school year, the first time it became available, but that as of August more than 300 districts and charter schools had said they would use it—about a quarter of the state’s 1,207 districts and charters.
After the board approved the revisions, the education agency said its online curriculum materials would be updated within 30 days, though it did not say how long it would take to print and replace physical learning materials or how much the replacement would cost. Little, who voted for the changes, said she worries the board has “set a precedent for sloppy publishing.”
Dempsey said the agency has increased the number of reviewers from five to eight to assess materials going forward, adding that he is “hopeful that will improve our process, where these are caught in the summer and not later on.”