Texas education board delays vote on reading list including Bible passages

AUSTIN - A vote on a Texas public school required reading list will now take place in April after a meeting of the state's education board. 

The list, as it was presented by the Texas Education Agency this month, would mandate all public schools teach passages of the Bible in classrooms. 

Texas board delays reading list vote

The latest:

The reading list, which proposes nearly 300 books and 11 readings directly from the Christian Bible, was scheduled for Wednesday during a committee of the full board of the Texas Education Agency in Austin. 

That meeting, which lasted nearly 10 hours, heard opinions and arguments from Texas teachers, former educators, current students in the public school system, and leaders in state education. The majority of those who attended the meeting spoke in opposition to the proposal. 

Public comments heard concerns over issues like the length of the list, which one teacher said would take over his curriculum and prevent him from teaching the readings he's been assigning for years. Others were of the belief that the list should include a wider variety of authors, reflecting the diversity of Texas and better representing the student body. 

The board also briefly addressed the issue of including texts from other religions in the list, questioning if anything in state or federal law would require Texas to balance out the Bible with comparable religious readings. It was decided that there was nothing legally requiring such a balance, and it was instead up to the discretion of the state's education board whether to represent other faiths. 

What's next:

After much testimony and discussion, an amended list was presented as an alternative. That list would remove many readings and substitute a few additions. In the end, however, the members agreed that they didn't have the time to properly compare the lists and come to an informed decision in their January meeting. 

With a vote of 13-1, the board agreed to table the original list and the amended version until their next meeting on April 6-10. They said they planned to take the time between meetings to consider the list and prepare feedback ahead of the ultimate vote. 

Whichever version of the list passes won't go into effect until the 2030-31 school year. 

Texas school Bible readings

Of the nearly 300 required readings in the original proposal, 11 are directly from the Christian Bible:

• Do Not Be Anxious (Matthew 6:25–34) – Grade 6
• The Definition of Love (1 Corinthians 13) – Grade 7
• The Shepherd’s Psalm (Psalm 23) – Grade 7
• Jonah and the Whale (Book of Jonah) – Grade 7
• The Eight Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1–12) – Grade 8
• David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) – English I
• Lamentations 3 – English I
• The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) – English II
• To Everything There Is a Season (Ecclesiastes 3) – English III
• The Book of Job (selected chapters) – English IV

Three other texts — "The Golden Rule," "The Parable of the Prodigal Son," and "The Road to Damascus" — are Biblical retellings taken from Texas' Bluebonnet Learning curriculum. 

Other texts aren't directly from the Bible, but are either theological or have strong Christian symbolism. Read the full proposal below:

Next steps in Texas education

Big picture view:

The proposed list is the first step towards implementing rules laid out in House Bill 1605 of Texas' 2023 legislative session. 

The literature list is set to be followed by a vocabulary list, which the TEA said will be driven in part by the approved literature selections. 

Following the finalization of the lists, a two-and-a-half-year process will begin for publishers to prepare textbooks to support the new guidelines. Additionally, state exams will be updated to reflect the changes.