Overview
- The Texas Education Agency published a draft list of mandatory titles for every grade and the 15-member State Board of Education is set to take a preliminary vote next week.
- The draft includes ten excerpts from the Old and New Testaments and three Bible-infused Bluebonnet lessons, with no required readings from other religious texts.
- The plan would be added to state Reading Language Arts standards and some components could be incorporated into the new statewide test that will replace STAAR.
- Grades 6–12 center on required anchor texts with suggested pairings, with examples such as Animal Farm, Antigone, Great Expectations, The Odyssey, and Night plus contextual readings like the Federalist Papers and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.”
- TEA describes the list as a minimum that teachers can supplement, the board can add or remove titles before final approval, and Texas would be the first state to mandate specific readings if the plan is adopted.