Texas lawmakers are quickly advancing bills that teachers and civics education advocates worry would have a chilling effect on classrooms and hamper efforts to encourage students to be effective citizens.
Education groups are mobilizing against moves they say would clash with existing standards, infringe on free speech and make it more difficult for students to get involved in civic life.
The Senate recently passed wide-ranging legislation from Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, which he cast as a way to ensure social studies teachers focus on “traditional history” and refrain from discussing certain concepts related to race and racism.
The House could soon vote on its companion bill.
The legislation comes amid continued debate over what students should be taught about America’s complex past and present. Part of the Trump administration’s legacy is a fervent desire in conservative states to promote “patriotic education” and ban the teaching of critical race theory, an academic framework that, among other things, probes the ways in which government policies uphold systemic racism.
Bills with similar objectives gained traction in other red states — including Idaho and Tennessee — in recent weeks.
In a Facebook post, Creighton summed up his bill as an attempt to prevent “the Biden Administration from advancing mandates on requiring critical race theory curriculum because, in Texas, we will not make students apologize for our country and our history.” It’s passage was cheered by Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as a rejection of “woke” philosophies.
Conservatives have aggressively pushed back as some school districts move to embrace diversity and inclusion efforts — including recruiting diversity officers, requiring unconscious bias training for staff and analyzing their curriculums through a racial equity lens.
Former President Donald Trump, for example, ordered the creation of the 1776 Commission to promote “patriotic education.” President Joe Biden later disbanded the group and dismissed its report, which historians panned as peddling outdated and false information about American history.
Still, on Twitter this weekend, former Trump policy advisor and speechwriter Stephen Miller wrote, “every conservative state should ban CRT in schools — and use President Trump’s 1776 Commission as the framework to instill patriotic values & teach pro-American history.”
A bipartisan group of education advocates viewed this legislative session as a historic chance to revamp civics education in Texas. But they’re now concerned the process is becoming overly politicized. Educators testified that they want a comprehensive approach to expanding civics education that blends several existing bills and would increase teacher training, while providing more opportunities for students to connect what they’re learning to the real world.
While Creighton has zero-ed in on the idea of preventing his interpretation of critical race theory in the classroom, educators say there are several other provisions tucked into his bill and its companion that are “unworkable, unrealistic and unnecessarily punitive.”
Richardson ISD Superintendent Jeannie Stone described the bill as a grab of local control, saying the Legislature should not “substitute its judgement for that of professional educators.”
The proposed legislation states that “a teacher may not be compelled to discuss current events or widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs.” But that contradicts standards laid out by the State Board of Education. Several people and groups also questioned how a teacher could prepare students to be good citizens if they are not teaching current events.
“It’s essentially dumbing down our students and keeping them from thinking through real-world conversations and issues — things students are expected to navigate on an everyday basis,” said state board member Marisa Pérez-Díaz, D-Converse.
Creighton said on the Senate floor that if a teacher wants to broach current events, they must incorporate diverse perspectives.
Instilling a sense of media literacy is an essential part of a quality education, said Wendy May-Dreyer, chair of the Texas Civic Education Coalition. That becomes difficult if a teacher isn’t told to discuss the news.
The legislation also seeks to prohibit so-called “action civics.” The bill would not allow teachers to require work that involves any “social or public policy advocacy,” lobbying or political activism for course credit or extra credit.
Creighton said teachers shouldn’t encourage students to protest, lobby or strike.
But opponents say that’s an overly broad edict that could rule out many of the methods that social studies educators use to connect what’s taught in the classroom to what’s going on in the real world.
Officials with the Texas Council for the Social Studies say students shouldn’t be kept from learning to participate in the democratic process through hands-on projects. They pointed to past successes where students advocated for a stop sign to be placed at a dangerous intersection and worked with legislators to proclaim pecan pie as Texas’ official state pie.
Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, questioned whether that means a teacher couldn’t give a student extra credit for volunteering with the NAACP on voter registration efforts. Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, pushed Creighton to remember that the Civil Rights movement was powered by young people.
“I got active early as an activist in my community, while I was in junior high school,” he told Creighton on the floor. “I’d like to see kids wind up like you and I, to become senators, to learn about civic engagement early.”
The legislation would also keep school districts from accepting “private funding” to help them develop curriculum or provide teacher training. That could be harmful to social studies teachers, advocates say, because educators often rely on outside donations to pay for professional development and class materials.
“We depend on private funding,” said Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth, a former high school teacher and longtime State Board of Education member.
It’s unclear whether the groups’ advocacy will end up having an impact in the Republican-controlled Legislature. They plan to continue raising awareness about the legislation’s potential impact on social studies classrooms.
It’s important for social studies teachers to encourage critical thinking, including about race and racism, Pérez-Díaz said. Students, she said, “experience America as it truly is and not how it’s romanticized to be.”
CORRECTION, 9:40 a.m., May 4: This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Jeannie Stone’s name.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, The Meadows Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University and Todd A. Williams Family Foundation. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
