Texas State Social Studies Revision

Your humble correspondent will be working as a Content Advisor for the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) Social Studies K–12 TEKS Review and Revision Process. One effect: the American Birthright Zoom Meeting will be on Wednesday, October 15, not Tuesday, October 14. A second effect: I will say, this would be a good idea! to the Texas State Board of Education officially on no end of social studies and civics reform. And in the best of all possible worlds, the Board members will agree on recommendations X, Y, and Z, and say, Make it so.

Why this matters, aside from gleeful self-importance: to illustrate the complexity of the education reform in the 50 states. Texas doesn’t invite education reformers in to wave a magic wand and change everything. Indeed, this is distantly a follow-up on a public revolt against draft social studies standards proposed in 2022—three years elapsed between that revolt and a committee being appointed. Education reform has to bide its time, and then it asks individuals to serve as content advisors, be part of a committee, and – in a good world – the elected representatives will listen to their advice, and the bureaucracy will comply with a good spirit. But everything is slow, complicated, partial, uncertain, and idiosyncratic—nothing that happens in Texas can quite be a copy-paste model for what to do in other states.

In other words, this will be a learning process for yours truly—but it also does illustrate very well how education reform has to work. We have to be patient, show up, try to take part in the political and administrative processes, learn how they work, and submit advice for responsible policymakers to judge, and accept as they see fit.

We can and should aim for more spectacular revolutions as well. But slow, uncertain detail-work is part of the campaign.

New State Affiliate Head

Garrett Caldwell of New Jersey has kindly agreed to join our State Affiliates and head up the New Jersey state affiliate for the Civics Alliance. Welcome, Garrett!

America’s 250th Anniversary Celebrations

The National Association of Scholars is now part of the America 250 Civics Coalition!—and the Civics Alliance also encourages anyone and everyone to take part in celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday. This is very much an Andy Hardy Let’s Put On A Show! celebration. The previous administration did not make extensive preparations for 2026, and there simply isn’t time for a massive organized effort to come out of DC. So everyone and anyone—think about what you and local organizations can do to celebrate our country’s 250th! Whatever you do, send us email, and we can make sure this gets publicity from DC. We’re gonna put on a show ourselves, we’re not gonna rely on other people to do it for us …

Clearly, the celebration of our country isn’t supposed to be polemical, unlike pushing for education reform, which inevitably has to be. Anything education reformers do to celebrate our nation’s birthday: do that wearing a different hat, and don’t fold it into our efforts for education reform. Part of education reform is to make sure our children want to celebrate our nation’s birthday. Still, there’s a distinction between the political and the civil, and celebrating our nation’s birthday should be civil, not political.

Virginia School Board Member Alliance

The Virginia School Board Member Alliance exists!—and is working (among other things) to improve social studies and civics education at the school district level. And elsewhere in the nation, there’s School Boards for Academic Excellence, and the Minnesota Parents Alliance, and Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty’s initiative Restoring American Education, and—much more we don’t necessarily know about, so tell us about larger initiatives at the school board and school district level.

An awful lot of our work has been at the state level, and we do think that’s important work. But education reform has to be implemented school district by school district, classroom by classroom. The work done by the Virginia School Board Member Alliance, and by every education reformer in the school boards and school districts, is vital. Education reform has to happen at the local level to be effective.

New Resources

Testimony

Would you like to be on a list of people prepared to give testimony in favor of a state bill to reform civics education? If so, please get in touch with me: randall@nas.org. We need people ready to testify in all 50 states—ideally, with some personal tie to the education system, but testimony from any citizen would be good.

Civics Alliance Now Has Twelve State Affiliates 

The Civics Alliance is building a network of state affiliates—groups dedicated to removing action civics in their states, whom we will list on our website. We now have twelve affiliates in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Texas. If you would like to form such an organization, or suggest an existing organization, please get in touch with David Randall (randall@nas.org).

The Civics Alliance will have its monthly Zoom session devoted to social studies standards reform on Wednesday, October 15, at 2:00 PM Eastern Time. Please email randall@nas.org if you would like to join these monthly Zoom meetings.

Social Studies Standards Revision Schedule

2025/Current: Arizona, Kentucky, Montana, Ohio, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
2026: Colorado, Maryland, North Dakota, South Carolina
2027: Hawaii, Kansas
2029: Louisiana
2030: Minnesota
2031: Illinois

No Revision Currently Scheduled: California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington.

Please email David Randall (randall@nas.org) if you are interested in further information about your state’s social studies revision process, and what you can do to participate.

Continuing Priorities: Federal Legislation 

At the federal level, the Civics Secures Democracy Act threatens to impose action civics nationwide.

The Civics Bill Tracker 

Civics Alliance supporters may now use the Civics Bill Tracker to track all proposed federal and state legislation related to civics.

Public Action 

We encourage Civics Alliance supporters to inform the public and policymakers about the stakes and consequences of action civics bills.

Best,
David Randall
Executive Director, Civics Alliance
Director of Research, National Association of Scholars

Photo by Courtney Rose on Unsplash