The Texas Education Agency must spend up to $8.4 million in taxpayer money to correct thousands of errors in learning materials that drew national scrutiny for their inclusion of Bible stories.
That funding will pay for printing and shipping new materials as well as disposing of the current batch, according to a contract provided to The Texas Tribune by Pam Little, a Republican State Board of Education member. Texans must cover the cost of roughly 4,200 corrections to Bluebonnet Learning because agency officials developed it using state funding.
The corrections include hundreds of copyright violations, formatting errors and typos. The Tribune previously reported additional complaints from educators about missing pages, incorrect answer keys and books falling apart.
“The slide deck for the handwriting portion is out of order for the workbook page,” one teacher complained last year.
“The story of Carlo and Leonardo is missing. Teacher Resources page 357 lists it, and it is referred to Unit 2 Lesson 3. The actual story is missing,” an administrator said.
“Pages are coming loose, and flying around the classroom,” another administrator revealed.
The State Board of Education approved Bluebonnet for use in public schools in 2024. Board members have known about the errors since January. However, it was not clear until recently how much it would cost the state to fix.
The $8.4 million tab, first reported by FOX4 Dallas-Fort Worth, comes at a time when state leaders criticize school districts for a funding crisis they view as caused, in part, by poor planning and reckless spending.
Little said she hoped to ask Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath about the bill following his quarterly remarks to the board this week. But a late meeting start and scheduling conflicts did not allow for the time, said education agency spokesperson Jake Kobersky.
“The errors are unacceptable, and the vendor responsible for the errors has been fired,” Kobersky said. “TEA’s contracting processes have also been changed so that if errors occur on future projects, any associated costs must be paid by the vendor.”
The cost amounts to just below $5 per student in the impacted schools, Kobersky said.
Several board members described the 4,200 corrections as highly unusual. For comparison, four other publishers that submitted correction requests around the same time reported a combined 16 edits.
“The fact that they have requested licensing changes and the fact that they have these items in here leaves us open to lawsuits for a violation of copyright laws,” Little said earlier this year.
Bluebonnet, an elementary and secondary school reading and math program that state leaders often tout as high-quality, comes with a $60 per-student incentive for districts that use it. As of last year, nearly 600 districts planned to use some of the materials.
The K-5 reading portion faces criticism for its use of Bible stories, while others express concerns about the lessons downplaying racism and slavery.
Meanwhile, the State Board of Education will vote Friday on a significant rewrite of Texas’ social studies lessons and a mandatory reading list, both of which face scrutiny for their focus on Christianity and lack of focus on racial, gender and cultural inclusion.
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