Is Texas Getting a Mandatory Literacy Curriculum?

State reading tests purport to test abstract reading comprehension skills, influencing classroom instruction to focus on the skills rather than on any particular topics or texts. That approach doesn’t actually boost comprehension. It also disadvantages students who are already disadvantaged by depriving them of the knowledge and vocabulary they need to understand complex text.

One reason states stick to this failed model is that districts and schools generally have the freedom to adopt whatever literacy curriculum they want, or at least choose from a set of options. So even if state officials wanted to ground a reading test in specific content, there’s no common content for them to work from.

There’s been one exception. In my last post I described Louisiana’s experiment with a reading test based on texts in its state-created literacy curriculum, available for free to districts in the state (or anyone else, for that matter). The state was able to conduct this experiment only because so many districts there had opted to use its curriculum.

In my post, I lamented that Louisiana’s pilot had been nipped in the bud and expressed my hope that another state would try something like it. But given the obstacles, I was dubious that any of them would.

Imagine my surprise when, shortly after the post was published, I discovered that Texas may be embarking on an even more radical path.

A “List of Texts” or a Curriculum?

Here’s what has happened, as far as I can piece it together: Several years ago, the Texas legislature passed a law, HB1605, requiring the State Board of Education to “specify a list of required vocabulary and at least one literary work to be taught in each grade level.” (Emphasis added.) The Texas Education Agency was tasked with formulating a list for the Board to approve.

Instead of proposing just one or two works for each grade level, as the language of the legislation seemed to envision, TEA came up with lots of them. In first grade, for example, there are 34 “works” to be covered, primarily through teacher read-alouds. Fifth-graders would be expected to read 17 works and eleventh-graders 23.

And this is just the first step in a larger plan, as outlined by TEA in a submission to the SBOE. If the SBOE adopts the list of literary works—a decision that will be made in April—it will then adopt a