The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) met in Austin last week for its January 2026 meeting, taking up a wide-ranging agenda with long-term implications for curriculum, graduation requirements, instructional materials, school libraries, and teaching assignments. Over four very long days that went into the night, board members had robust discussions, took public testimony, met in committees, and heard comments from the commissioner of education. 

Summary: 

• The commissioner of education updated the SBOE on Texas Education Agency (TEA) initiatives and fielded questions from board members. 
• The SBOE discussed recent and ongoing rule revisions by the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC), including a new rule governing teacher assignments.  
• The board greenlighted key topics and subtopics recommended for inclusion in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for social studies that are currently being reviewed. 
• As required under 2025 legislation, the board approved changes to school library collection development standards. 
• SBOE approval of the Instructional Materials Review and Approval (IMRA) Cycle 2026 list now enables the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to proceed with its formal review of the many submissions over the next year. 
• Board members mulled personal financial literacy course options within the required secondary school curriculum.  
• A controversial vote on a proposed statewide literary works list mandated by the Legislature in 2023 was postponed to the April SBOE meeting. The board similarly postponed a vote on changes to the Bluebonnet curriculum materials requested by the publisher. The board may schedule an additional meeting to address the postponed matters. 
• SBOE members agreed to move forward with proposing a new rule mandating additional parental rights training for school board members. 

Commissioner of Education Mike Morath gave his regular update to the SBOE last Wednesday. His remarks mostly focused on the newly released TEA Annual Report and the agency’s four “anchor priorities” for public education. Read more about the presentation and Morath’s discussion with SBOE members in this earlier blog post. 

While several items on the January SBOE agenda were finalized through committee and full board votes, others sparked lengthy debate and were postponed for further work, signaling that key policy questions remain unresolved. It is worth noting that several discussions shaped the board’s direction even when no final vote occurred. The commissioner’s comments and remarks from other TEA staff reinforced that many SBOE decisions, particularly around graduation requirements and new courses, are being intentionally paced to align with TEA timelines for statutory compliance and agency rulemaking. The January meeting also underscored ongoing tension between the board’s role in setting broad frameworks and the risk of inserting highly specific content too early in the process, a dynamic that appeared in debates over social studies topics, literary works, and course substitutions. In addition, while the board’s approval of the IMRA Cycle 2026 instructional materials list was largely procedural, it signals a very crowded upcoming review cycle that will place added pressure on school districts to track alignment, procurement timelines, and professional development as new curriculum standards move forward. 

SBEC Rule Review: 

After a brief update and discussion of the current generation of charter school applications, the Committee on School Initiatives spent most of its time fulfilling the SBOE’s role in oversight of new SBEC rules. The SBOE’s authority over certification rules is limited; the board can either veto an SBEC rule (sending it back to SBEC) or vote to take “no action,” which allows the SBEC-adopted rule to move forward and take effect as scheduled. 

For the January meeting, the committee examined newly adopted SBEC rule changes in 19 TAC Chapter 231, which governs educator assignment criteria. Assignment rules directly affect who can teach which courses, how districts staff campuses, and how schools respond to shortages. A classroom educator testified that the new assignment rules would be inadequate by allowing only social studies, and not math, teachers to teach the newly created Personal Financial Literacy course for high school. Despite the committee’s apparently unanimous agreement with the testimony that math educators should be able to teach the course, committee members ultimately recommended that the full SBOE take no action on the new SBEC assignment rule. The full board later adopted that recommendation unanimously (11–0), enabling the SBEC rule to take effect as planned. The committee requested, however, that SBEC work with the testifier and other educators and consider a future amendment to the rule to address their concerns. The TEA staff seemed open to this idea, but SBEC is under no obligation to reopen the rule outside of its normal multi-year cycle for rule reviews now that the new assignment rule is slated to take effect. 

TEA staff also updated the committee members on general SBEC rulemaking and implementation relating to educator preparation, certification, and discipline. The agency’s focus was on technical compliance, alignment with recent legislation, and consistent statewide enforcement by educator preparation programs. Staff noted that while there were no new rule actions proposed during the last SBEC meeting, the certification board is working on several rule revisions that will be coming to the SBOE for review in upcoming meetings.  

Social Studies TEKS Review: 

As part of the SBOE’s review and revision process for the K-12 social studies TEKS currently underway, TEA surveyed a group of board-designated content advisors for their recommendations on key topics and subtopics to include in the curriculum standards. The SBOE Committee on Instruction recommended approval of the recommendations. One board member proposed that Earl Rudder, a former Texas governor and longtime president of Texas A&M University, be included as a required Texas history figure in the seventh-grade curriculum standards, but other board members questioned whether naming specific individuals at this early, framework-setting stage of the TEKS review was appropriate. The proposed amendment to add Rudder to the TEKS failed by a vote of 3–9. The SBOE then approved the K-12 social studies TEKS topics and subtopics by a vote of 11-0. 

State Standards for School Libraries: 

Senate Bill (SB) 13, passed by the Legislature in 2025, requires the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) to amend, with the SBOE’s approval, state standards for school library collection development. After a discussion about clarifying statutory citations, the board adopted an amendment by Member Will Hickman to approve the updated standards distributed by the TSLAC. Hickman emphasized the changes were clarifying, not substantive. The updated library standards were then approved unanimously, but questions about implementation, enforcement, and dispute resolution remain unresolved and may resurface in future meetings. 

Instructional Materials Review and Approval: 

The board also approved the Instructional Materials Review and Approval (IMRA) Cycle 2026 list, which identifies 529 instructional materials that publishers have submitted for state review. Approval of this list authorizes TEA to begin its formal review process, including suitability analysis, standards alignment, and review by educator panels. Last week’s action by the SBOE did not approve any instructional materials for classroom use; it simply locked in the universe of products that will be reviewed over the coming year. Final approval decisions will occur later, after reviews are completed and materials return to the board for action.  

Some board members raised concerns about the sheer volume of materials in the 2026 cycle, the compressed timelines for educator review panels, and the implementation burden on school districts, particularly those facing simultaneous TEKS revisions and procurement deadlines. Despite those concerns, the board approved the proposed 2026 list by a vote of 9-1.  

Personal Financial Literacy Course Options: 

The Legislature passed House Bill (HB) 27 in 2025, which changed the high school social studies curriculum to replace a required economics course with a personal financial literacy course. The bill also added a new requirement that the SBOE let students satisfy the personal financial literacy requirement by completing an advanced placement (AP) course. The SBOE’s January agenda included beginning the process to update the list of courses students may take to satisfy the new law. 

The proposal would require high schools to offer courses in United States History Studies Since 1877, United States Government, and Personal Financial Literacy; plus at least two social studies courses selected from Economics with Emphasis on the Free Enterprise System and Its Benefits, World Geography Studies, World History Studies, advanced level economics, world geography, world history, and personal financial literacy courses offered as dual credit, or a comparable AP or IB world history or world geography course that does not count toward another credit required for graduation. 

During the board’s consideration of the proposal, Member Evelyn Brooks offered an amendment to remove AP Business with Personal Finance and instead add AP Microeconomics as the AP option connected to personal financial literacy. Brooks explained her concern was alignment and documentation. “We did not get a crosswalk,” said Brooks, “and after looking at the outlines, there’s only one unit that really pertains to the personal financial literacy.” She argued AP Microeconomics aligned better to financial literacy objectives and urged the board to do “due diligence” and “find the best match for what our groups put together.”  

Member Julie Pickren asked if either option truly meets the legislative intent behind the statute. Pickren said she’d been advised AP Business with Personal Finance was “a little shaky… in terms of what the legislature wants,” and warned against substituting an economics course when lawmakers wanted “a purely personal financial literacy course, and not a hybrid.”  

TEA staff also noted a key complication and pointed out that the personal financial literacy TEKS are still in development, making a full crosswalk difficult until the course standards are finalized. The amendment by Brooks failed 1–8.  

The board’s vote on the course listing was only a first reading vote to formally propose the rule change, which must come back before the board for a second reading before it is finally adopted. Once published in the Texas Register, a public comment period on the proposal will run from February 27 to March 30, 2026, and the SBOE will also take public testimony on the matter at its April meeting. 

Literary Works List Postponed: 

There was a long discussion on the controversial statewide literary works list mandated by HB 1605, which the Legislature passed in 2023. That law requires the SBOE to list at least one literary work that must be taught at each grade level in English and Spanish language arts. Several SBOE members argued for postponement to allow time to review suitability flags, grade placement, and workload implications. Others pushed back on delaying the adoption of the list. Multiple members raised concerns about time, scope, and representation. One member cautioned the list could crowd out writing and analysis. Member Pam Little said, “Where are our students going to have time to do responsive writing and develop their critical thinking skills? We want to teach them how to think and not what to think.” Another member noted concerns about inclusion. Ultimately, the board voted 10-1 on postponing the item to April with Brandon Hall being the only member to oppose the delay. 

Bluebonnet Instructional Materials Corrections: 

The SBOE had an opportunity in January to consider publisher-requested changes to instructional materials previously adopted by the board, including math and reading materials produced by TEA’s Bluebonnet Learning. During the board’s discussion, members raised serious concerns about the scope and timing of changes requested by publishers. The SBOE members seemed alarmed to learn that while publishers routinely request post-approval corrections, Bluebonnet has more than 4,200 requested changes, a number repeatedly described as unprecedented. By comparison, other publishers have typically submitted only single-digit or low double-digit corrections. Board members emphasized that many of the changes sought by Bluebonnet went beyond minor technical edits and included extensive licensing and image replacements, raising concerns about copyright compliance and the board’s statutory responsibility to ensure suitability. Little noted that in K–5 English language arts alone, there were 547 requests to replace images, which several members argued should be treated as content changes requiring careful review. Members expressed frustration that they had little time to evaluate thousands of requested changes, many of which were not available until just before or during the meeting. They questioned how such a volume of errors passed through the original review process, in which publishers are required to certify accuracy and proper licensing.  

The board’s discussion also highlighted the unique stakes surrounding Bluebonnet. Because the curriculum is state developed under 2023’s HB 1605, school districts face financial incentives and pressure to adopt it in order to access additional state funding. SBOE members warned that this incentive structure raises the risk that districts may rely on materials that are still undergoing massive revision, and the board’s approving thousands of changes without sufficient review could expose districts and the state to legal and instructional risks. At the same time, denying the updates would leave educators using materials already known to contain errors.  

Ultimately, citing the unprecedented number of corrections, unresolved licensing issues, and lack of adequate review time, the board voted to postpone action on the Bluebonnet updates until the next meeting, signaling that scrutiny of the curriculum and its HB 1605-driven rollout is far from over. For more, check out this article in The Texas Tribune.  

Parental Rights Training: 

To comply with other new legislation passed in 2025 via SB 205, the board voted to propose a new rule, 19 TAC §61.4, addressing mandatory parental rights training for school board members. The proposed rule will now be filed in the Texas Register for public comment before coming back to the SBOE for a second reading and vote on final adoption. TEA staff explained that current training requirements total roughly 28 hours for first-year trustees and about 15 hours in subsequent years; the newly proposed parental-rights training would be in addition to those totals. Board members also pressed TEA on the status of the statutorily required Parental Rights Handbook, the timeline for developing the trustee training modules, and whether the SBOE was being asked to vote on training hours before seeing the final training product. Several board members emphasized the intent to align trustee training with the parental handbook topics and to deliver the training in a modular, online format to meet deadlines. Some board members attempted to reduce the number of required hours (including a proposed change from five hours to two, and another to only one hour), but those amendments failed. Thus, the board left intact the training framework recommended by its Committee on School Initiatives to move forward in the rulemaking process. 

Next Steps: 

At the end of the meeting, SBOE Chair Aaron Kinsey announced he will call a special meeting to address the action items delayed at this meeting. The board will need to revisit the postponed Bluebonnet updates, the controversial literary works list, and other unfinished business ahead of what is already shaping up to be a pivotal April meeting. The number of postponed items and the need for a special meeting underscored growing strain on the SBOE’s timeline as legislative mandates, curriculum development, and review processes increasingly collide. Stay tuned!