1- Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announces Senate select committees in memory of Charlie Kirk.
Just days after the apparent political assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has announced the formation of the House and Senate Select Committees on Civil Discourse and Freedom of Speech in Higher Education.
- - Announcement from the Lt. Gov's office.
2 - State education board rejects far-right push for more focus on Texas history, less world culture.
The Republican-led State Board of Education rejected a proposal favored by conservative activists to overhaul the state’s social studies curriculum by requiring a heavier concentration of Texas history taught across six grades, instead of the current two.
Instead, after a marathon meeting Wednesday, the board settled on an approach that will more closely integrate state, national and global history, and also focus more lessons on the founding of Western civilization and democracy. Under the plan, Texas history will be the focus of grades three and eight; U.S. history will be the focus of grades four and seven; and grades five and six will center on world history.
Supporters said it would create an “identity” of Texan and American heritage for children at earlier ages.
3 - In reversal, Texas SBOE backs far-right plan to deemphasize world history, cultures.
The State Board of Education on Friday approved a revived plan to focus classes more on Texas history and remove distinct courses on world history and cultures.
The Republican-led board voted, 8-7, to greenlight a framework for social studies classes, which it had rejected only days earlier. The plan, favored by conservative activists, scraps the current sequence of social studies courses and replaces it with a five-year chronological approach beginning in third grade. It greatly reduces the amount of time spent on world history and boosts state history, which will now be taught across six grades and become the focus of a new 8th grade standardized exam.
4 - GOP challengers threaten takeover of Texas SBOE with help from influential donor group.
For more than 20 years, Fort Worth Republican Pat Hardy has been a reliably conservative voice on the State Board of Education.
Hardy has fought for Moses to be included in social studies standards, advocated for presenting creationism alongside evolution in science textbooks and said she was an early voice to call for the banning of critical race theory from the state’s public schools.
But in 2024, Hardy is not conservative enough for Republican voters: She lost her primary election earlier this month against Brandon Hall, a former youth pastor who has pitched himself as a fighter for Christian conservative values.
In addition to Hardy’s outright loss, two other Republicans on the board — Pam Little and Tom Maynard — were forced into runoff elections against opponents pitching themselves as stronger conservatives. All three challengers received heavy financial support from Texans for Educational Freedom, a right-wing advocacy group that cut its teeth trying to sway local school board elections but has turned its attention to overhauling the state board, spending more than $300,000 this year.
