The Texas State Board of Education approved a sweeping rewrite of high school social studies standards Friday, ending months of debate over how Texas students will be taught American history, world history, government, religion and other subjects.

The board’s action completes another major piece of its overhaul of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS. The SBOE approved revised K–8 social studies standards in June but held back four high school courses — U.S. History, U.S. Government, World History and World Geography — for additional consideration.

Those courses returned to the board this week amid another round of contentious debate.

Supporters of the revisions have argued the new standards provide students with a stronger grounding in American history and the principles behind the nation’s founding. Critics have accused the board of minimizing parts of the country’s history involving race and diversity while giving students an unbalanced portrayal of Islam.

Debate over Islam dominates public testimony

Roughly 150 people signed up to testify before the board, with much of the opposition focusing on standards dealing with Islam.

One provision drew repeated criticism for directing students to “explain early Islam in terms of the Prophet Mohammed's brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”

The language had already become one of the most disputed pieces of the high school rewrite. Muslim Texans who testified before the board argued that it presents an inaccurate and hostile portrayal of their faith, while supporters maintained that students should be taught difficult aspects of Islamic history. At least two advisers involved in the standards process had also raised concerns about the characterization.

The disagreement became particularly heated during testimony involving Jawad Rasul, imam of the Islamic Center of Brushy Creek.

SBOE Member Julie Pickren, R-District 7, asked Rasul whether his mosque had hosted meetings for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. After Rasul said it had, Pickren noted that Gov. Greg Abbott declared CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood “foreign terrorist” and “transnational criminal” organizations in November 2025.

“I do not consider the governor to have the authority to do so,” Rasul responded.

Another testifier described the standards-writing process as “the hidden curriculum,” arguing students will absorb lessons not simply from what the standards say but from “how it was written, who was consulted, and what’s been left out.”

She criticized the use of terms including “Islamic ideology,” “CAIR amendments” and “radical Islamic ideology,” saying they had been used to “fearmonger.”

Board members clash over religion and race

The debate also exposed sharp divisions among SBOE members.

Member Marisa Perez-Diaz, D-District 3, questioned why Islam was receiving such treatment without similar scrutiny of other religions.

“If we’re going to talk about all of the problems within the Quran, then in order to accurately and fairly speak holistically about any kind of religion, then we should probably start talking about some of the problems within the Bible as well,” Perez-Diaz said.

Concerns extended beyond religion.

Member Tiffany Clark, D-District 13, said during the meetings that “everything related to African American history [had] been stricken,” questioning why material had been removed from individual standards.

Chairman Aaron Kinsey, R-District 15, disputed that characterization. He said subjects including the Harlem Renaissance and Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 had not been eliminated but instead “folded into” another standard.

One of the content advisers involved in drafting the standards similarly explained that those events were placed “in the context of the change that was happening in the 1920s, instead of listing them out separately.”

Democratic state lawmakers also weighed in.

State Rep. Salman Bhojani of Euless called for “accurate, balanced standards rooted in established history,” arguing the revisions leave out discrimination against Latino and Hispanic communities and early American religious freedom for Muslims while failing to adequately address the lasting consequences of African American history.

He encouraged Texans to contact their SBOE representatives and “demand that our history reflects the experiences of all Texans.”

State Rep. Suleman Lalani of Sugar Land offered similar criticism.

“Texas students deserve the full truth of our history, not a version shaped by politics,” Lalani wrote on X.

“As a father, a physician, and a Texan, I believe our children are capable of learning the truth, even when history is complicated. We should be teaching them to understand it, not rewriting it for them,” he added.

Roy, Cruz urge board not to back down

Republican members of Texas’ congressional delegation pushed in the opposite direction as the final vote approached.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, posted an interview with Pickren on Thursday accusing opponents of attempting to alter what Texas students learn.

“The Marxist-Islamist alliance is mobilizing to rewrite what Texas students learn and remove the current factual standards revealing the truth about the violent, aggressive actions of the promoters of Islam,” Roy wrote on X.

During the interview, Pickren said CAIR had logged hundreds of hours of testimony before the SBOE during the past year.

“Their demands are pretty clear: They want a complete rewrite of U.S. and Texas history. They want Founding Fathers removed,” Pickren said, also claiming CAIR representatives wanted founding documents including the Constitution and Declaration of Independence removed from the TEKS.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz reposted the interview and said he had heard “troubling reports” that the board was being “pressured by CAIR to whitewash the history of Islamic conquest, expansion, and jihad.”

Cruz urged Republican board members to “not back down” or “bow to pressure,” adding that Texas students “deserve to know the truth about Islam.”

The political fight capped a social studies revision process that has stretched across several years and attracted extensive public testimony. The SBOE delayed an earlier effort to revise the standards in 2022 before launching the current redesign.

Board gives final approval

On Friday, the board approved the revised standards for U.S. Government by a 10-3 vote, U.S. History by an 11-2 vote, World History by a 9-3 vote and World Geography by an 8-3 vote.

The votes largely broke along party lines, with Republicans supporting the revisions and Democrats opposing them.

The new standards update four high school courses that the board pulled from its broader TEKS proposal in June for additional work. The SBOE's official agenda called for their second reading and final adoption this week.

The revised K–12 social studies TEKS are scheduled to begin reaching Texas classrooms in the 2030–31 school year, with implementation beginning in kindergarten and the early grades before expanding to additional grades.

Personal finance standards also approved

The board separately approved standards for a personal financial literacy course in an 8-4 vote.

That course had become another ideological battleground after conservative organizations including the Cicero Institute and Texas Public Policy Foundation objected to materials from California-based nonprofit Next Gen Personal Finance. Among their objections were lessons addressing racial discrimination in finance and race-based reparations.

Pickren said on X that although the board rejected the Next Gen standards during its June meetings, “Texas law allows school districts to still purchase it and use it in classrooms.”

Kinsey has argued that debates over a particular curriculum should be kept separate from the board’s work establishing statewide standards, describing curriculum development as “way downstream” from the TEKS process.

The final personal financial literacy standards require students to examine “how foundational economic principles, ethical decision-making, and personal responsibility are essential to personal financial literacy.”

They also reference economists Thomas Sowell and Adam Smith and call for students to contrast free enterprise with socialist and communist economic systems.

The standards describe socialism as a “transitional stage toward communism in Marxist theory” and direct students to explain how “differences in economic freedom and individual financial decision-making affect private property, freedom of choice, voluntary exchange, and wealth building.”

The personal financial literacy standards will reach school districts sooner than the broader social studies overhaul, with implementation scheduled for the 2028–29 school year.

Friday’s votes bring the SBOE closer to completing a yearslong rewrite that will shape what millions of Texas public school students are expected to learn. They also leave school districts, teachers and textbook publishers with the task of turning standards forged through an unusually contentious political process into classroom instruction.