Submit Public Comments: Your Cheat Sheet for Proposed Elementary Social Studies TEKS
A grade-by-grade review of factual errors, misleading content, and important omissions in the 2026 TEKS revision
Are you a concerned parent, teacher, or community member looking for guidance on submitting recommendations to the State Board of Education before the June 15 public comment deadline? This article is for you. Today we are discussing the elementary standards; stay tuned for middle and high school.
Read on as we dissect hand-picked proposed standards that raise concerns with content overload, bias, or ouright inaccuracies, and suggestions to improve the standards. We list the specific grade and TEKS code (ie 5G or 1A) and the original language of the proposed TEKS. You can review these specific issues and share the ones that most concern you at the SBOE’s public comment site. (Hint, there are three buttons - select the one in the middle: “Proposed New 19 TAC Chapter 113, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies.”) From there you can either type directly in the box, or upload a separate document. The full text of proposed TEKS for social studies is here.
Cliff notes version of the process so far: Texas is in the middle of rewriting its K–12 social studies standards, the guidelines that determine what every Texas public school student learns about history, government, geography, and economics. The State Board of Education is scheduled to conduct 2nd reading at their June meeting (June 22-26). This is the final step of a rushed and politicized process, and our last chance to advocate for meaningful revisions of these standards. Read on for a close examination of the missing pieces in the proposed elementary social studies TEKS.
Across elementary grades: “With Adult Assistance”
Before getting to individual grades, there’s one problem that runs through multiple grade levels: the phrase “with adult assistance” appears 35 times across K–2 standards.
Why this matters:
Standards are supposed to describe what a student can do on their own, not what they can do when a teacher holds their hand. “With adult assistance” is never defined. Does it mean the teacher tells the story and students repeat it? That any prompting is allowed? No one knows, and that makes the standard impossible to assess fairly.
More fundamentally: if a task genuinely requires adult help to complete, that’s a sign the task belongs at a higher grade level. Using this phrase 34 times doesn’t solve a developmental mismatch, it just hides it.
Representative example:
Kindergarten, 8.B: identify, with adult assistance, and sort pictures of wants and needs
Grade 1, 4.B: retell, with adult assistance, the story of the Boston Tea Party, including that colonists threw tea into the harbor to protest unfair taxes, using the sequential terms beginning, middle, and end.
Grade 2, 6.J: locate, with adult assistance, Underground Railroad routes that led north to Canada and south from Texas to Mexico on a map (H, Geo/C, S)
Recommendation:
Audit all 34 instances. If the task is genuinely appropriate for the grade, remove the phrase. If it isn’t, move the standard to the right grade level.
Grade 1
1a: Five Standards Devoted to the Oil Industry
Proposed standards:
Grade 1,
(13) Free Enterprise Shapes Texas. The student understands how free enterprise shaped Texas in the past. The student is expected to: (A) identify oil and natural gas as valuable natural resources; (B) explain that the discovery of oil in Texas led to new towns, transportation, and products; (C) describe Patillo Higgins and Anthony Lucas as wildcatters who found oil at Spindletop Hill in 1901; (D) describe Henry O. Flipper as an engineer who worked in Texas on land and oil projects; (E) describe William P. Hobby as a governor who supported business during the early oil years.
What’s wrong:
Five separate standards in a “free enterprise” unit are dedicated entirely to the Texas oil industry, but none of them actually explain what free enterprise is. Six-year-olds are asked to memorize four names (Patillo Higgins, Anthony Lucas, Henry O. Flipper, William P. Hobby) and associate each with a specific oil-industry role. That’s a lot of names for a concept that’s never defined.
There’s also a historical problem: Henry O. Flipper’s most significant legacy was as the first African American graduate of West Point and a U.S. Army officer. Framing him primarily as an oil-industry figure misrepresents who he was.
Recommendation:
Consolidate Standard 13 into one standard that honestly situates the Texas oil industry within the free enterprise unit, and remove the content overload of names to memorize. “Describe how the discovery of oil at Spindletop created new jobs, businesses, and products, showing how free enterprise shaped Texas.”
If Flipper is included, honor his full historical significance.
1b. Comparing Pilgrim Governance to Modern Family Life
Proposed standard:
Grade 1, 3.E: compare the ways people make decisions in home, school, and community today to how Pilgrims made decisions together.
What’s wrong:
This asks 6-year-olds to draw comparisons between their own daily decision-making (what happens at dinner or recess) and the governing practices of a 17th-century religious community. That’s a significant historical abstraction for a first grader. The comparison also presents Pilgrim governance as a model of democratic participation without noting that the Mayflower Compact applied only to Pilgrim men, explicitly excluded the Wampanoag people they lived alongside, and was rooted in religious authority rather than consent of all community members.
Other standards in this unit already cover the Mayflower Compact in concrete, age-appropriate ways. This one is redundant and adds confusion.
Recommendation:
Remove Grade 1, 3.E.
Grade 2
2a. The “Black Robe Regiment” is a Modern Myth Taught as History
Proposed standard:
Grade 2, 5.G: explain that the Black Robe Regiment were pastors who preached about freedom, inspired America’s independence, and served in the Continental Army.
What’s wrong:
“The Black Robe Regiment” was not an actual military unit. The phrase was a derogatory nickname used by the British for American clergy who preached in support of independence. It was not used by the clergy themselves during the Revolution, and its current popularity comes largely from 21st-century political and religious revival movements, not from the historical record.
Telling second graders this was a real regiment that “served in the Continental Army” is historically inaccurate. The broader point, that some clergy supported independence and used their platforms to encourage it, is true and worth teaching. But it needs to be taught accurately.
Recommendation:
Grade 2, 5.G revised: explain how some religious leaders used their sermons and public influence to support the cause of American independence during the Revolutionary War.
Grade 3
3a. Christian Values as the Sole Source of American Civic Ideals
Proposed standard:
Grade 3, 8.C: describe how Christian beliefs, including valuing every individual, doing what is right, and showing compassion for others, helped shape American ideas about equality, rights, and treating people with dignity.
What’s wrong:
The values listed, human dignity, compassion, treating people equally, are not unique to Christianity. They appear across Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Indigenous traditions, and secular humanist thought, all of which have also shaped American culture. A standard that attributes these values exclusively to Christianity gives students an incomplete picture.
There’s also a harder historical truth: Christianity has been invoked throughout American history to justify the opposite of these ideals including slavery, the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples, and the persecution of religious minorities. Students will encounter these contradictions in later grades. A foundation that presents Christian influence as uniformly positive will need to be unlearned when they have to confront the more complex realities.
Recommendation:
Remove Grade 3, 8.C. The role of Christian thought in American history is addressed in other standards in this unit. A separate standard claiming that American civic values originate from Christianity specifically is historically incomplete and unnecessary.
3b. Redundant Standards on Ancient Greek Democracy
Proposed standards:
Grade 3, 6.I: explain how citizens in ancient Greece used voting to make decisions together and describe how these ideas influenced self-government in America and Texas.
Grade 3, 6.K: describe Greek ideas about citizenship, liberty, and responsibilities and explain how these ideas influence rights and duties of citizens in America and Texas today.
Grade 3, 6.L: explain Greek ideas about the rule of law, including separation of powers, following rules, and serving on juries, and compare these to laws and government in America and Texas today.
What’s wrong:
These three standards cover substantially the same ground, Greek civic ideals and their influence on America, and none of them asks students to notice the central contradiction: Athenian democracy was limited to free adult men who owned property. Women, enslaved people (a large portion of the population), and non-Athenians were explicitly excluded. Teaching Greek democracy as a model for American self-government without that context sets students up for a misleading picture of both ancient Greece and the long struggle to expand democratic rights in America.
There’s also a factual issue: “separation of powers” in 6.L is a concept formally articulated by Montesquieu in the 18th century. Attributing it to ancient Greek city-states is anachronistic.
Recommendation:
Consolidate into one or two standards. Include the contribution of Greek civic ideas and require students to recognize who was and wasn’t included. Remove the anachronistic separation-of-powers language from the Greek context.
3c. Founding Myths of Rome Taught Without Historical Context
Proposed standard:
Grade 3, 7.B: compare the myth of the founding of Rome by Romulus with the story of the founding of the Roman Republic by Brutus and explain what these stories teach about leadership and government.
What’s wrong:
Neither story is historically documented. Both are legendary narratives that historians treat as mythology, not fact. Asking students to draw civic lessons from them without noting that they are legends risks presenting myth as history. The substantive Roman contributions to American government (written law, republicanism, the concept of civic virtue) are covered well in the other standards. This one adds confusion without adding understanding.
Recommendation:
Remove Grade 3, 7.B.
3d. Ancient Israel includes Seven Standards and Significant Problems
Grade 3 devotes seven student expectations each to ancient Israel, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome. The Persian Empire, whose model of religious tolerance directly influenced later civilizations, gets nothing. Ancient Egypt appears only as backdrop for the Exodus story. The unit’s priorities reflect contemporary political and religious concerns more than historical significance.
Several of the seven proposed standards also have specific problems:
Grade 3, 5.B: explain important stories from ancient Hebrew tradition found in the Old Testament of the Bible, including the Exodus from Egypt, the Promised Land, and the Ten Commandments (H, Geo/C)
What’s wrong:
These narratives are foundational to Western civilization and worth teaching, but their status as historical events is contested among archaeologists and historians. A public school history class should teach them as what they demonstrably are: texts that have profoundly shaped law, literature, and politics. The current framing blurs the line between religious instruction and historical education.
Recommendation:
Explain important stories from ancient Hebrew scripture, including the Exodus, the Promised Land, and the Ten Commandments, and describe how these narratives shaped Western civilization, American culture, and ideas about law and justice (H, Geo/C)
Grade 3, 5.C: describe how Hebrew teachings, including the Ten Commandments, provided foundational ideas about right and wrong that influenced American laws (H, Geo/C)
What’s wrong
This is significantly overstated. The prohibitions against murder, theft, and false witness appear in virtually every legal tradition in human history. The more direct documented influences on American law are Greek philosophy, Roman legal structures, English common law, and Enlightenment political theory. In fact, the first four comandments (You shall have no other gods before me; You shall not make idols; You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain; Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy) are explicitly forbidden by the First Amendment.
Recommendation:
Describe how Hebrew teachings, including the Ten Commandments, contributed to ideas about ethics and justice that, alongside Greek philosophy, Roman law, and English common law, shaped American legal traditions (H, Geo/C)
Grade 3, 5.E identify Abraham as an ancient Hebrew leader whose story is important to Abrahamic religions; 5.F, describe Moses’ contributions as a law-giver through the Ten Commandments; and 5.G, describe Moses as a Biblical figure who led the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery and later served as inspiration for African Americans held in slavery in America and Texas, and as inspiration for Colonists during the American Revolution
What’s wrong?
Moses already appears in 5.B, 5.C, and 5.G. Standard 5.F adds nothing not already required by 5.B and 5.C. Standard 5.E introduces Abraham only to note his story “is important to Abrahamic religions," providing no content that gives students nothing usable. 5.G asks third graders to analyze how the same religious narrative was used by three different groups (ancient Israelites, American colonists, enslaved African Americans) across thousands of years is developmentally inappropriate. This requires genuinely sophisticated intellectual work that belongs at a higher grade level.
Recommendation:
Remove both. Consolidate into 5.B. The freed space could go toward content that currently gets none, the Persian Empire being the most obvious example.
Grade 4
4a. Using Modern Country Names for Medieval History
Proposed standard:
Grade 4, 1.A: locate on a map the Alps and Pyrenees mountains, Israel, the North Sea, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.
What’s wrong:
This standard is part of a unit on the Early Middle Ages, but none of the places listed existed in their current form during that period. The United Kingdom wasn’t created until 1707 (and 1801 for its current form). Germany as a unified nation didn’t exist until 1871. The modern state of Israel was established in 1948. Using today’s political map to teach medieval history isn’t just a technicality; it actively prevents students from understanding that political geography changes over time, which is a core geographic thinking skill. It also produces the absurd result of asking students to locate a country that wouldn’t exist for another 1,200 years on a “medieval” map.
Suggested revision:
Grade 4, 1.A revised: locate on a map the Alps and Pyrenees mountains, the North Sea, the Iberian Peninsula, the Frankish Kingdom (later the Holy Roman Empire), and the region of the Holy Land, and England as they were understood during the Early Middle Ages.
4b. Missing: The Moors and the Preservation of Classical Knowledge
MISSING STANDARD: this content was in earlier draft versions and has been removed from the April 2026 proposed rule.
What should be here: an explanation of how Moorish scholars in medieval Spain preserved Greek and Roman learning, advanced mathematics (including algebra and Arabic numerals), and transmitted that knowledge to European scholars, which would directly influence the Renaissance content taught later in this same unit.
Why the omission matters:
The April 2026 draft covers the preservation of classical texts by Christian monks, but completely omits the parallel Islamic scholarly tradition in Spain, which was larger, more extensive, and more directly connected to the Renaissance. The Moors established major libraries and centers of learning in Spain and advanced fields including medicine, astronomy, and philosophy. Charlemagne’s campaigns along the Pyrenean frontier (which the draft does address) are also inseparable from the Frankish-Moorish conflict, yet students have no context for who the Moors were.
This is the removal of an entire civilization’s contribution from a unit that claims to teach the foundations of Western knowledge.
Recommended addition:
New standard: explain how the Moors in Spain preserved the learning of the Greeks and Romans, established large libraries, and advanced learning by spreading the use of Arabic numerals, and algebra (H.Geo/C)
4c. Why Europe Wanted Sea Routes: A Standard Built on a Misconception
Proposed standard:
Grade 4, 7.B: explain that a cause of the Age of Exploration was the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire that closed off Europe from the Silk Road and trade with Asia.
What’s wrong:
This standard contains a historical inaccuracy that has been repeated so often it’s become conventional wisdom, but historians don’t support it. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 did not “close off” European trade with Asia. Most of the spice trade entered Europe through Alexandria and Beirut, not Constantinople. The Ottomans were actually very interested in continuing and profiting from trade; they had no incentive to shut it down. There was no dramatic decline in spice imports to Europe after 1453.
Portuguese exploration of the African coast under Prince Henry the Navigator also began before 1453, which means the Ottomans can’t be the cause of exploration that predates their conquest.
The accurate story is more nuanced: the Ottoman presence made trade more expensive and less certain for Europeans, which increased their desire to find a cheaper route, but it didn’t “close” anything.
Suggested revision:
Grade 4, 7.B revised: explain how the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 disrupted established European trade routes and increased the cost of Asian goods, intensifying European interest in finding alternative sea routes to the profitable spice trade.
4d. A Misinterpretation of Magna Carta as a Religious Rather Than a Political Document
Grade 4, 3.J explain that the Magna Carta, created in 1215 in England, drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first document that limited the power of the king and protected individual rights, based on Christian beliefs (H, G/Civ, Geo/C);
What’s wrong.
This standard has several accuracy problems. Saying the Archbishop of Canterbury drafted Magna Carta is an overstatement; Stephen Langton played a role in negotiations, but the document was driven primarily by barons rebelling against the king. Describing it as protecting “individual rights” is an anachronism: Magna Carta was designed to limit royal power and preserve the privileges of wealthy male landowners. Its broader application to individual rights came centuries later. And calling it a document “based on Christian beliefs” misreads its purpose entirely. This was a political power struggle, not a religious text.
Suggested revision:
Grade 4, 3.J, revised: explain that the Magna Carta, created in 1215 in England, was the first document that limited the power of the king
Grade 5
5a. The Scientific Revolution Standard Gets the Scientific Revolution Wrong
Proposed standard:
Grade 5, 1.E: explain how technological improvements in transportation and farming during the Scientific Revolution supported economic development by making goods easier to produce and trade.
What’s wrong:
The Scientific Revolution (roughly 1543–1687) was fundamentally about a change in how people understood knowledge itself: the development of the scientific method, where people tested ideas through observation and experiment rather than accepting them on authority or tradition.
The standard describes agricultural and transportation improvements, which are real historical developments, but they belong to different historical movements (the Agricultural Revolution, the early Industrial Revolution starting in the 1700s). Conflating them with the Scientific Revolution produces a standard that cannot be taught accurately.
Suggested revision:
Grade 5, 1.E revised: explain how the introduction of the scientific method during the Scientific Revolution changed how people came to understand the natural world, moving from explanations based on tradition or the teachings of authorities toward explanations based on observation and experimentation
5b. The Spanish Armada and the Glorious Revolution: Mixed-Up Causes
Proposed standard:
Grade 5, 4.C: explain how changes among Christians following the Protestant Reformation influenced events in England, including the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the Glorious Revolution, and how these events inspired the American colonies to seek religious and political freedom.
What’s wrong:
This standard tells a causal story that doesn’t hold up historically. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was primarily a military event: the result of English naval tactics, poor Spanish planning, and a catastrophic storm. The idea that it resulted from the Protestant Reformation is a popular myth (sometimes called the “Protestant winds” narrative) that attributes the storm to divine Protestant intervention. That’s theology, not history.
The timeline is also off: most of the Separatists and Puritans who came to New England did so decades before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, so the Revolution cannot have “inspired” them to leave. The Glorious Revolution did matter for American political thought, but for a different reason: it reinforced parliamentary sovereignty and set limits on royal power, which influenced how colonists thought about their own rights. That’s a more accurate and more useful connection.
Suggested revision:
Grade 5, 4.C revised: explain how the Protestant Reformation created lasting religious and political divisions in England, and describe how the Glorious Revolution of 1688 reinforced the principle of limited government and parliamentary authority in England, influencing American colonial ideas about individual rights and consent of the governed.
5c. Women Are Nearly Invisible in K–5 History
Proposed standard:
Grade 5, 8.F: describe the contributions of Abigail Adams during the Founding Era, including her call for leaders to “remember the ladies” and her advocacy for women’s rights.
What’s wrong:
Abigail Adams is the only named woman in all of Grade 5. Across all of K–5, only eight named women appear in any standard. That’s eight women across six years of elementary social studies. Women were not absent from American history: they were present as spies, nurses, political writers, organizers, and community leaders. The standards, as written, make them nearly invisible.
In the Founding Era specifically, Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most influential political writers of the Revolutionary period. Her pamphlets, plays, and eventually her history of the Revolution shaped how Americans understood what they were fighting for. Women contributed to the war effort in documented, consequential ways. None of this appears in the current draft.
Suggested revision:
Grade 5, 8.F revised: describe the contributions of Abigail Adams, including her advocacy for women’s rights; the contributions of Mercy Otis Warren, whose political writings supported the Patriot cause; and the roles of women as spies, nurses, seamstresses, and fundraisers during the Revolutionary War.
5d. “List the Bill of Rights” Is Not Civic Education
Proposed standard:
Grade 5, 9.J: list the Bill of Rights and explain how the Constitution protects individual rights and freedoms.
What’s wrong:
“List the Bill of Rights” asks students to recite ten amendments, which is a memorization task that doesn’t require understanding what any of those rights actually protect or why they matter. Listing is not learning. A student can recite the Fourth Amendment without knowing what it protects them from. The standard misses the more important civic question: what do these rights actually mean in practice, and why did the founders think we needed them? Additionally, fifth grade students do not necessarily need to know every one of the ten amendments, such as the intricacies of the Seventh Amendment (right to a jury trial in federal civil cases). It makes more developmental sense to introduce them to the ones most frequently referenced first, and then introduce more complex amendments at later grade levels.
Suggested revision:
Grade 5, 9.J revised: describe the rights protected by the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments and explain why the founders added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution to protect individual freedoms from government overreach.
What You Can Do
The State Board of Education votes in June 2026. Public comment periods are still open. If you have concerns about any of these standards, you can submit written comments to the SBOE, contact your local school board, or reach out to your state representative.
We will be following up with an article about middle school and high school grades in the next few days, so stay tuned and subscribe to stay updated!