Texas to spend $8 million to fix errors in controversial Bluebonnet curriculum in school

It’s been known for months that there are errors in the curriculum, but now we’re learning it’ll cost millions of taxpayer dollars to fix. 

Millions in taxpayer dollars to fund curriculum updates

What we know:

More than $8 million of taxpayer money will be spent to fix thousands of errors related to the Texas education agency’s controversial bluebonnet curriculum, according to a contract provided to FOX 4 by the state board of education’s Vice Chair Pam Little. 

"I just think that this is a cost that we really didn’t need to have," said Little. "My background is educational publishing and never have I ever seen a program come with this many errors."

The Texas state legislature approved the curriculum in 2023. It drew criticism because parts of the curriculum incorporate lessons drawn from bible stories.

Thousands of typos and copyright issues uncovered

The backstory:

It’s not required to learn in all Texas school districts, but it’s incentivized as districts get $60 per student. Roughly a quarter of Texas school districts use at least portions of the curriculum that was published last year. 

"In doing a little bit further research, it seems like 1,900 of them were actual errors, and 1,062 of those were licensing image issues, meaning that they used images that they did not have the approval to use," said Little.

Back in February, the state board of education approved fixing 4,200 errors found in the materials. The TEA says about half of the errors were in response to teacher feedback or grammatical errors. 

Initially, the TEA did not disclose how much it would cost to fix. The $8 million expense consists of reprints, shipping and disposal of old text, according to the contract we’ve seen.

"So that involved reprints and the way the State of Texas works with these reprints is when there are errors that need corrected, updates, things like that then the publisher is the one that covers that cost. Well, in this case the publisher is the State of Texas," said Little.

Texas officials face questions over sloppy publishing

Dig deeper:

The state board of education meets all week. Little says she’ll be directing a question about the high costs to commissioner Mike Morath on Wednesday. 

"Just because I think it’s important that our taxpayers understand the costs that’s been involved in this."

Awaiting response from the Texas Education Agency

What's next:

FOX 4 is still waiting to hear back from the TEA with a statement about that final cost. 

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