The state school board narrowly voted on Friday to delay updating the state’s social studies curriculum until 2025 after facing pressure from conservatives over proposed changes.

Earlier this week, board members said they would remand the social studies review after hours of public comment.

Board member Will Hickman, who voted for the postponement, said, “We have time to hear different opinions.”

Board member Marisa B. Perez Diaz said it was a board “failure” not to proceed with the renewal.

While adjustments to the state’s social studies curriculum have been deferred (such as adding courses focused on Asian American and Native American studies and learning about the gay pride movement), the commission We have taken steps to change the number of years students learn about state history.

Texas students are currently learning about state history in grades 4 and 7. Board members were considering scrapping that timetable in order to allow students in grades 6 through her 8th to study both U.S. and Texas history.

Instead, the board voted 10 to 4 to use Hickman’s proposed order to teach Texas history to fifth and eighth graders.

“We’ve heard from many public teachers, educators, and parents that they want us to commit to two years of dedicated work in Texas,” Hickman said. “And their concern is that if you put Texas together with the United States, it will either weaken or be ignored.”

Officials with the Texas Department of Education said the first proposal expands the coverage of Texas history and will be needed in more grades. However, the more conservative public argued that the lack of years devoted solely to Texas history would lead to a sparse education.

Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, said the history of Texas and the United States is the most important history students learn, so they should devote the school year.

Board members who voted to postpone the vote said they did not like the proposed order to teach students Texas history, even though the board had first accepted the order months earlier. rice field.

A working group of educators, parents and industry experts selected by state commissions and TEAs spent the last year developing these new proposals. The next step was for the state commission to revise the recommendations and adopt them by the end of the year.

On Monday, the Texas Freedom Caucus, a group of Republican lawmakers in the state House of Representatives, sent a letter to the school board threatening legislative intervention if “substantial changes” were not made to the proposal.

“In a startling reversal of the spirit in which Congress passed several reforms aimed at protecting children in its last session, the proposed changes would force educators, among other things, to criticize, for example, racial theory We demand that you violate Texas state law by teaching subjects related to the .” the letter said.

Other proposed updates included a book describing the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers as “brutal” and “racial” in 1865, when he received news that Galveston slaves had been freed. It included teaching second graders about Juneteenth, the 19th of the month celebration. The LGBTQ pride movement would have been taught in eighth grade, in addition to the civil rights and women’s liberation movements.

The public who supported the update said history education needed to be more comprehensive and inclusive. Legislators and parents who opposed the change argued that it sought to bring critical racial theory—a college-level discourse examining the effects of systemic racism—into secondary education. Critical race theory is not taught in Texas public elementary and secondary schools.

By delaying the process, more conservative candidates who oppose so-called critical racial theories may be elected to state school boards before the standards are revisited. Several Republicans in Texas, who oppose critical racial theories, won primaries this spring and will be on the ballot in the state school board general election in November.

A 15-member board of the state school board reviews Texas’ essential knowledge and skills in social studies approximately every ten years. This curriculum sets the standard for how the state’s 5.5 million public school students of all grades learn their subjects.

Debate over changes proposed this year has been heating up, especially how the history of racism in America should be taught and made accessible to children on campus. passed a law restricting how the history of slavery and racism in America is taught in schools.

Senate Bill 3 prohibits teachers from claiming that the advent of slavery in America was America’s true founding symbol. Instead, teachers must inform students that slavery was a “deviation” from American principles. Students cannot be required to study the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning “1619 Project.” The New York Times explains that it “puts the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans right at the heart of our national narrative.”

Disclosure: The New York Times is a financial backer of The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, bipartisan news organization funded in part by donations from its members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial backers play no part in Tribune journalism. Find their complete list here.

The full program is now live from the 2022 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, September 22-24. Inside tracks for the 2022 elections and the 2023 legislative session, the state of public and higher education institutions at this stage of the pandemic, why Texas suburbs are booming, why broadband, and more, the 100 things planned for TribFest Check out the schedule of mind-expanding conversations above. Access issues, the legacy of slavery, what really happened at Uvalde, and more. See program.