In the Barbara Jordan State Office on June 22, a group of Texas senators and two Republican members of the State Board of Education, Julie Pickren and Brandon Hall, bowed their heads in prayer to open a press conference.
“We’re not educating children of the world. We’re educating the children of Texas,” Pickren said, prompting a round of “amens” from her audience. “Our nation was founded as a Christian nation, and Texas is a Christian state,” Hall, who is also a North Texas pastor, later added.
On Friday afternoon, June 26, the Republican-majority Texas State Board of Education voted 9-4 to approve required reading lists for K-12 that, starting the 2030-2031 school year, will make Texas the first state to require its public school children to read the Bible.
The SBOE then voted to approve revised social studies curriculum standards (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS) for K-8 that educators and historians say over-emphasize Texas’ and Christianity’s role within history and minimize women’s history, Black history, racism in America, world cultures, and civil rights movements.
The board ultimately postponed approving some of the high school curriculum standards until their September meeting. Some Republican members, like Tom Maynard, wanted more clarification about College Board and Advanced Placement curriculum obligations in relation to the Texas TEKS.
“In the professional judgement of our reviewers, the 2026 draft TEKS will not provide an effective foundation for K-12 history education in Texas public schools. … Collectively, these shortcomings risk reducing students’ preparation for higher education, the workforce, informed civic participation, and success in an increasingly interconnected world,” the American Historical Association wrote in a June 26 statement.
On the Monday ahead of the vote, Pickren and Hall made clear to press that the Republican supermajority of the board (10-5) was unapologetically determined to infuse Christian nationalism, Bible references, and American exceptionalism (the idea that the U.S. is a superior country to others) into the public-school classroom.
“They’ve watered down our history, they’ve taken the Christian foundation of our history out, they’ve painted our Founding Fathers as villains,” Hall said. “We’re rolling all of that back this week, and we’re bringing the Bible back into schools.”
And entire passages from the Bible appear throughout the required reading lists, in almost every grade from elementary through high school. Second graders will read the story of David and Goliath; third graders, Daniel and the Lion’s Den; fourth graders will read Luke 14:7-11; fifth graders, the story of Moses in Exodus.
For sixth graders, Matthew 6:25-34; in seventh grade, Psalms 23 and Matthew 5:1-12. Eighth graders will read Ecclesiastes. High schoolers in English I will read the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke; In English II, the book of Job; In English III, the story of Adam and Eve from Genesis; In English IV, 1 Corinthians.
“We are actually playing ball. We’re playing the game of politics, and when I say ‘game of politics,’ I don’t demean that at all. This is literally a competition for what the next generation of Texans are going to learn,” said Rick Green, former state representative and president of the conservative education organization Patriot Academy.
On Monday, Tarrant County Democratic Rep. Salman Bhojani took the public comment mic to ask SBOE members to better represent the religious and ethnic diversity that exists in Texas public schools within the required reading lists.
“I have spent my career fighting for religious freedom. … The government cannot favor one faith over another,” Bhojani said. “[The] reading list does not reflect the full breadth of who we are as Texans.”
Testifiers also asked the SBOE to reconsider how Islam is represented within the social studies curriculum standards. The board voted to remove a standard in April about Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy.
“Algebra, mathematics, they were introduced to us by Muslim scholars,” Felicia Martin, president and executive director of the Texas Freedom Network, told the Chronicle. “You’re eliminating our students’ ability to think critically, to know about different belief systems, and that just doesn’t set them up for success in the world.”
Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy, warned SBOE members on Monday about the influences of communism, the civil rights organization CAIR (the Council for American-Islamic Relations), and “Sharia law” he claimed exist on Texas public education.
“There are communists, some of whom are in evidence upstairs. There are Sharia supremacists, some of whom are across the street and all over the place,” Gaffney said. “They have to get rid of us to realize their ambitions, and it starts with the kids.”
On the Texas Capitol Mall on Monday afternoon, Texans staged a mock funeral for religious freedom in Texas public schools. Multifaith religious leaders, educators, and students from across the state donned black clothes and threw flowers into a casket.
Frank Strong, an English teacher in Austin, told the Chronicle that he can’t imagine teaching the new required reading lists to his students in three school years.
“It’s such an ideological list in terms of its religious perspective, its one-sided partisan politics,” Strong said. “It’s really interesting for us to bring in different perspectives and let students look at different sides of an argument. But this list … undercuts that function of my class.”
“There’s been a lot of talk in the building today about American values, and I think inclusion and equality are American values,” Strong continued. “They’ve always been what I base my teaching on, and what I’ve tried to foster in my classroom. This is undermining that.”
Earlier on Monday, after waiting in a long queue of testifiers, Strong expressed his concerns to the SBOE. He said only about half of the board members were present to hear public comment at the time. “There was just a bare quorum. … It does feel frustrating,” he said.
And ahead of the vote, Pickren and Hall made clear that they were not interested in criticism of the curriculum standards and reading lists – with Hall referring to some testifiers as “Marxist historical revisionists” – or the feedback of their Democrat colleagues.
“We have Democrat members who have said things … just disrespectful to our country, and they want to only talk about the negative aspects of American history,” Hall said ahead of the vote. “We have to reject all Democrat amendments [to the curriculum standards and reading lists], and I’m committed to doing that.”
After the vote, Republican members of the SBOE celebrated the approval of the new reading lists and curriculum standards, which will directly influence millions of children across the state, as a victory for the Christian GOP.
“We the people showed up to help the great state of Texas defeat this woke, Marxist-tied, terrorist agenda to destroy Texas public education,” Pickren said on June 27. “For the first time since 1963, we have now put the Bible back in a mandatory reading list … and instructional materials.”
This article appears in July 3 • 2026.
