A bill to add “an understanding of communist regimes and ideologies” to the Texas social studies curriculum passed in the state’s legislature Wednesday. It now heads to Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) desk to be signed into law.
It passed in the House 112-20 on Wednesday, after passing in the Senate in March. If the bill is signed into law, the Texas State Board of Education will revise its Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills curriculum for grades 4-12 beginning in the 2026-2027 school year.
Texas Senate Bill 24 was authored by Texas state Sen. Donna Campbell, and highly regarded by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who said the prioritization of the curriculum amendment was necessary “so history does not repeat itself.”
While Patrick’s statement when the bill was passed in the Texas Senate in March labeled it as bipartisan, several democratic lawmakers, such as state Reps. Vikki Goodwin and Jon Rosenthal, tried to get the bill amended to include the dangers of fascism, specifically Nazism, as well.
The Texas State Board of Education will consult with victims of communism during their research for the TEKS curriculum change. The social studies curriculum was last changed in 2022 to include voting as a form of group decision-making in kindergarten, identifying future civic duties for middle schoolers, and doing cost-benefit analyses on expenditures with high schoolers. Those revisions were enacted during the 2024-2025 school year.
The Texas high school curriculum had information about communism added in the last update, with students learning about free enterprise, socialist, and communist systems from an economic standpoint. If SB24 is signed into law, students will then learn more about the history such ideological campaigns brought on, including an estimated 100 million deaths during the 1900s alone.
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In April, Texas school ratings for 2022-2023 were shown to have dropped after the Texas Education Agency released performance data for the first time in five years. The records were made public by a state appeals court during a lawsuit against the TEA over its decision to change to an A-F grading system.
Patrick said in a statement that almost 80% of Texas teachers would be able to receive a raise if SB24 passed.
