Ryan Smits

  Thoughts on the   2026 Texas Literary Works List   The State of Texas just adopted a new policy where they are going to require specific texts ("literary works" as they call them) to be taught in all grade levels from Kindergarten through 12th grade. This is causing quite the backlash because there are biblical texts on this list. And, yes, requiring— requiring —teachers to teach passages from the Bible is problematic given the constitution that is supposed to protect the separation between church and state. There are ways to avoid saying that teaching things from the Bible has anything to do with the state mandating religion, and I think because it is not explicitly saying to teach religion, there are going to be some ways that teachers can subvert this. There are more egregious ideas at play here when you are requiring teachers to teach an entire list of specific literary works. It limits the ability of teachers to choose texts that are going to be relevant for their ...

Reading Between the Lines: Framing Texas' House Bill 3 Reading Practices Texas House Bill 3 (HB3), passed in 2019, stipulates the  Science of Teaching Reading  (SoTR)   requirement that new PreK–6 teachers must meet. For the past six decades, the "Reading Wars" debate ( Strauss , 2018) has been fueled by new developments in research ( Kim , 2008); all aim to find the most effective way to teach students to read which is often reduced to two approaches: whole-language versus phonics-based instruction. Texas'  Science of Reading policy advances phonics-based instruction. Educators and researchers express concern that such a strict focus on phonics instruction "is being used to silence the voices of literacy teacher educators and teachers rather than invite the collective exploration of possibilities" ( Hoffman et al., 2020, p. S255). The Texas Education Agency ( TEA ) presents the policy of HB3 in a  series of videos online .  ...