No - The Texas SBOE is Not Requiring Religion in Texas Public Schools
Setting the Record Straight on Texas’s New Reading List — and the Bible
The State Board of Education’s new K-12 reading list has been attacked by Democrats as an effort to “force religion” on Texas children. The facts tell a very different story — and my opponent, Aicha Davis, owes HD109 families an honest accounting of what this list actually contains.
What Happened
The board’s decision, the final vote, and the party-line divide
On June 26, 2026, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) gave final approval to the state’s first-ever mandated K-12 literary reading list, a project set in motion by House Bill 1605 (2023), which directed the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to develop required book, vocabulary, and social studies lists tied to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) [KSAT, 2025]. The list began as a pool of roughly 10,000 candidate titles narrowed by TEA staff, teachers, and board committees down to a final master list of approximately 293 works and excerpts spanning Kindergarten through English IV [TEA SBOE Literary List, 2026].
The board approved the final list on a 9–5 vote, with one Republican member joining the board’s five Democrats in voting no, largely over concerns about local teacher autonomy rather than the content of any single selection [Clerical Whispers, 2026]. Every “yes” vote came from a Republican board member; every Democrat on the board voted against final adoption [WSWS, 2026]. The new list will not take effect until the 2030–2031 school year, rolling out first for elementary grades [KSAT, 2025].
Supporters describe the list as a broad, historically grounded literary canon — Aesop, Shakespeare, Twain, Hughes, Douglass, Steinbeck — that also includes a small number of Bible excerpts alongside speeches, founding documents, and classic poetry, in the same way that Greek and Roman mythology and Norse-derived folktales appear on the list. Opponents, led by groups like the Texas Freedom Network, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, argue the list privileges Christianity over other faiths and blurs the line between literary and religious instruction [FFRF, 2026] [US News/Reuters, 2026].
Texas Freedom Network legislative communications associate Elva Mendoza summarized the opposition position bluntly: “Texas schools serve children from all faith backgrounds and those with none; they should all feel included. This list suggests that only one religious text— Christianity—is deemed worthy of mandatory reading” [NY Post, 2026]. On the other side, board members who supported the list, including pastor and board-appointed content adviser Brandon Hall, argued the goal was historical completeness, not religious instruction: “We’re going to stop watering down American history. We’re going to teach the truth. Our nation was founded as a Christian nation, and Texas is a Christian state” [Clerical Whispers, 2026]. Whatever one thinks of that framing, the practical question for parents is simpler: what is actually on the list, and how much of it is Bible content? That is where the loudest political claims collapse under the weight of the actual data — covered in Section 2 below.
It is also worth noting this reading list is separate from, though frequently confused with, the 2024 “Bluebonnet Learning” elementary curriculum, an optional K-5 instructional program the SBOE approved 8–7 in November 2024 that districts may voluntarily adopt for a modest per-student funding incentive [TFN, 2024] [CNN, 2024]. The reading list approved in June 2026 is a different, mandatory list of literary works and excerpts required in English Language Arts classes statewide, not an optional curriculum package.
The Reading List Itself
What’s actually required, grade by grade, and how much of it is Bible content
The full required reading list runs to 293 total selections across 16 grade bands, from Kindergarten read-alouds like The Cat in the Hat and The Very Hungry Caterpillar to senior-year works like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Thoreau’s Walden [TEA SBOE Literary List, 2026]. It draws heavily on Aesop’s fables, American founding-era documents (the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, the Mayflower Compact), classic children’s literature, Greek mythology, and 19th- and 20th-century American and British literary staples.
| Grade Band | Total Selections | Direct Bible Excerpts | Bible Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kindergarten – Grade 2 | 92 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Grades 3 – 5 | 62 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Grades 6 – 8 | 57 | 5 | 8.8% |
| English I – English IV (High School) | 82 | 5 | 6.1% |
| Total, K–English IV | 293 | 10 | 3.4% |
No single grade level devotes more than 9% of its required reading to Bible excerpts, and the earliest grades — Kindergarten through 5th grade, the years when young children are most impressionable — contain zero direct scripture excerpts at all. The kindergarten and first-grade items sometimes mistaken for Bible content, such as “The Golden Rule” and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son,” are State of Texas–authored short readings that reference familiar cultural sayings and stories, not verbatim scripture passages presented for religious instruction.
Out of 293 total required readings on the entire K–12 list, exactly 10 are direct excerpts from the Bible — a total of 3.4% of the list. The other 96.6% is composed of fables, poetry, historical documents, speeches, novels, and nonfiction with no religious content whatsoever.
The complete list, organized by grade band, along with the specific Bible excerpts included and the sources for each, is provided in the “Inspect the Data” tab stack at the bottom of this article for parents who want to review every title themselves.
Why the Bible Is There
Cultural literacy, not catechism — no theology, doctrine, or worship is required
It is important to state plainly what the ten scripture excerpts on this list are not. They are not a curriculum in Christian theology. They do not instruct students in doctrine, require any religious practice, teach students to pray, or ask a single child to affirm any belief. Nowhere on the list does a student read a catechism, a systematic theology, or denominational teaching. Each Bible excerpt appears exactly the way a Greek myth like “Icarus and Daedalus,” a Norse-derived folktale, or a historical speech like the Gettysburg Address appears — as a short literary or historical text to be read, discussed, and understood in its context, alongside secular works from the same unit.
A 7th grader reads a several-verse excerpt of the Book of Jonah alongside Ray Bradbury and Naomi Shihab Nye in the same unit [TEA SBOE Literary List, 2026]. A high school senior reads a portion of the Book of Job in the same course that covers Dante’s Divine Comedy and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” In every instance, the Bible excerpt is one reading among several, selected for its literary and historical resonance — not for religious formation.
The reason these particular passages were selected traces directly to how central the Bible was to the people who founded both the United States and, later, the Republic of Texas. This is not a matter of opinion; it is documented in the historical record of the founders’ own writings. The most frequently cited scholarly study on this question is the 1988 analysis by political scientists Donald Lutz and Charles Hyneman, published in the American Political Science Review, which examined roughly 15,000 political writings, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and sermons from the founding era (1760–1805) and tracked which sources the founding generation cited most [Lutz & Hyneman, 1988].
Their finding, confirmed independently by multiple reviewers since, was that the Bible was the single most-cited source in that literature — accounting for 34% of all direct quotations in the sample, more than any other author or text, including Montesquieu (8.3%), Blackstone (7.9%), and Locke (2.9%) [Lutz & Hyneman, 1988] [Total Grace, 2022]. Deuteronomy was the single most-quoted book in that entire body of literature.
In fairness to the full picture, we should note a documented methodological caveat, since accuracy matters more than convenient talking points: later scholarly review of the Lutz-Hyneman data found that when reprinted sermons are excluded from the sample — leaving only political pamphlets, essays, and secular writings — the Bible’s share of direct citations drops to roughly 8.5%, and citations to the Bible specifically within the Federalist Papers debates of 1787–1788 were rare to nonexistent [Throckmorton, 2026] [Candst Tripod, n.d.]. We present this alongside the headline 34% figure, as reported by Lutz and Hyneman themselves, because both figures are true and relevant: the Bible was, by any measure, one of the most—if not the most—cited texts in the broader political and religious discourse of the founding era, even though its direct influence specifically on the text of the Constitution’s debates was more limited. This is a fair, evidence-based inference, not a claim we are stretching beyond what the data shows.
That broader cultural saturation extended directly to Texas. The men who wrote the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and framed the Republic’s early government were, like their American founding-era predecessors, steeped in a culture where biblical language, imagery, and reference were the common vocabulary of educated public life. Understanding why a 19th-century Texas statesman would invoke Providence, covenant, or scriptural allusion in a public document requires a baseline familiarity with the texts he was drawing on — the same reason English classes have long taught students Greek mythology to understand allusions in Shakespeare and Milton, without teaching students to worship Zeus.
That is the actual, stated rationale for these ten excerpts: cultural and historical literacy about the founding generation, not religious instruction. A student who has never read a word of the Book of Psalms will struggle to understand why so many American and Texan founding documents, speeches, and works of literature on this very list — from the Gettysburg Address to Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” — use the language and cadence they use. That is a literacy goal, not a theological one.
The Rhetoric vs. the Record
Comparing Democrat statements against the actual content of the list
Texas Democrats, including James Talarico — a sitting state representative and the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate — have built a consistent public narrative that Texas Republicans are “forcing religion” on schoolchildren and pursuing “Christian nationalism” through the state’s education policy. That narrative predates this specific reading-list vote and has been applied broadly to a series of separate, distinct policy items — the 2024 Bluebonnet curriculum, the 2025 Ten Commandments classroom-display law (SB 10), and now the 2026 reading list — often without distinguishing among them.
James Talarico’s statements
Talarico has repeatedly used maximalist language to describe Texas education and religion policy. Discussing the broader trend on a podcast in January 2026, he said: “Instead of putting the 10 Commandments in every classroom, instead of forcing school children to read the Bible against their wills, why don’t we, all of us, look inward and figure out how we can be more Christ-like” [Fox News, 2026]. That statement — “forcing school children to read the Bible against their wills” — is the kind of claim that, applied to this reading list, badly misrepresents the record: the list requires ten short excerpts out of 293 total selections, integrated as literature alongside Aesop, Twain, and Frost, not a Bible-reading mandate.
On the separate but related 2024 elementary curriculum fight, Talarico told the Texas House Committee on Public Education that the new materials taught “Christian Bible stories as historical fact” and warned, “Now your teacher is teaching Bible stories because some politicians in Austin are forcing them to. Public schools are not Sunday schools” [Aframnews, 2024]. And on the Ten Commandments classroom-display law, upheld by the Fifth Circuit in 2026, Talarico called the ruling “a deeply un-Christian decision” and warned against what he termed “Christian nationalism,” saying “the only thing worse than a tyrant is a tyrant who thinks they’re on a mission from God” [WFMD, 2026].
“Instead of…forcing school children to read the Bible against their wills, why don’t we, all of us, look inward and figure out how we can be more Christ-like.”— James Talarico, “Politics War Room” podcast, January 2026 [Fox News, 2026]
These statements blur together three legally and factually distinct actions: (1) an optional elementary curriculum districts may or may not adopt, (2) a law requiring a poster be displayed in a classroom, and (3) a mandatory literary reading list where 96.6% of the content has no religious character at all. Conflating “the government is displaying a plaque” and “10 out of 293 assigned readings include a Bible excerpt” with “forcing children to read the Bible against their wills” is not an accurate description of any of the three policies — and it is especially inaccurate applied to this reading list, where no student is compelled to adopt any belief, recite any creed, or engage in any religious practice.
Aicha Davis and the reading list
My opponent in HD109, Aicha Davis, served on the State Board of Education from 2018 through mid-2024 before being elected to the Texas House, and has a long, documented record of opposing the board’s Bible-related curriculum decisions. In 2024, discussing the earlier Bluebonnet elementary curriculum fight (a separate, optional program from this reading list), Davis told Spectrum News: “That’s when all of the stuff started getting introduced with the biblical references” [Spectrum News, 2024] — a comment that treated the presence of any biblical reference in instructional materials as inherently alarming, regardless of the proportion of the material it represented or the historical-literacy purpose it served.
Rep. Davis made her position on this exact subject even more explicit more recently. On July 20, 2025, she appeared at Disciple Central Community Church (“D3 Church”) in DeSoto at a campaign event for James Talarico’s U.S. Senate bid, where she gave Talarico her full public endorsement [Courier Texas, 2025]. Speaking from the pulpit of that church on the subject of the State Board of Education’s reading and curriculum choices, Davis said: “When you have a state board of education that would rather students pick and choose bible verses than learn about black history, it is not all good.”
Davis’s framing here — that the board would “rather pick and choose bible verses than learn about black history” — is not supported by the actual reading list. The list includes extensive Black history and literature at every grade level, including Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes’s “Harlem: A Dream Deferred” and “Dreams,” Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” and “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery, Robert Hayden’s “Frederick Douglass,” Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Carole Boston Weatherford’s Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, and the story of the Underground Railroad in Follow the Drinking Gourd — far more total selections, by count, than the ten Bible excerpts on the entire list. The premise of an either/or choice between Black history and scripture excerpts is not what the data shows: both are present, and Black history and authors appear on the list many times over relative to the ten Bible passages.
Black Authors and Black History vs. Bible Excerpts — A Side-by-Side Comparison
Since critics have specifically framed this as a choice between “bible verses” and “black history,” we went through all 293 required readings on the list and classified every author and text by documented race, ethnicity, and sex, and separately flagged every work either written by a Black author or centrally focused on Black history [TEA SBOE Literary List, 2026]. The results directly contradict the claim that the board favored scripture over Black history and authorship.
| Category | Count | Share of 293 |
|---|---|---|
| Direct Bible excerpts | 10 | 3.4% |
| Works by Black authors, or centrally about Black history | 18 | 6.1% |
| — of which, written by a Black author | 15 | 5.1% |
| Works by female authors | 75 | 25.6% |
| Works by Hispanic/Latino authors | 5 | 1.7% |
| Total required readings, K–English IV | 293 | 100% |
Works by or about Black Americans outnumber direct Bible excerpts on this list by nearly 2 to 1 — 18 selections (6.1%) versus 10 (3.4%). If the standard is which subject the board supposedly “favored,” the data shows Black history and Black authorship, not scripture, has the larger footprint on the list. Female authors, at 25.6% of the list, have a footprint more than seven times larger than Bible excerpts. None of this makes the list a “Black history list” or a “women’s literature list” any more than 3.4% makes it a “Bible list” — it is a broad literary canon in which all of these categories are present in modest, proportionate amounts.
Aicha Davis said the board would “rather have student pick and choose bible verses than learn about black history.” The data shows the opposite allocation: Black authors and Black history hold a larger, not smaller, share of the reading list than Bible excerpts do. Whatever one’s view of how much space either category should occupy, the claim that the board prioritized scripture over Black history is not supported by a plain count of the list itself.
Why the distinction matters
Other Democrats on the current State Board of Education used exactly the sweeping language this article is correcting. Board members and allied advocacy groups characterized the vote as “unconstitutional” and as amounting to the state “forcing teachers into the position of preaching rather than teaching” [TFN, 2024], and the Texas Freedom Network’s Rocío Fierro-Pérez said the board’s approach “veer[s] into straight-up Bible study, religious indoctrination, and bad history” [TFN, 2024]. Reviewing the actual excerpts — a handful of verses from Psalm 23, Matthew 5, Jonah, 1 Corinthians 13, and Genesis, presented as literature alongside Shakespeare and Hemingway — does not support characterizing this as “Bible study” or “indoctrination.” No student is tested on doctrine. No student is asked to affirm a creed. No class period is devoted to worship or prayer. The excerpts are read, discussed as literature and history, and the class moves on to the next assigned work — exactly as it does with every other item on a 293-item list.
Word choice matters in politics because it shapes how frightened or reassured a parent feels about their child’s classroom. Telling HD109 families that the state is “forcing children to read the Bible against their will” or engaging in “Christian nationalism” implies a wholesale religious takeover of the curriculum. The data does not support that description. A policy where 3.4% of required reading includes a Bible excerpt, integrated as literature, with zero religious excerpts at all before 6th grade, is meaningfully and substantively different from what has been described to voters — and constituents deserve to know the difference before they decide how they feel about it.
What This Means for HD109
Cedar Hill, Lancaster, DeSoto, Glenn Heights, Wilmer, Hutchins, Combine, Ferris, and Seagoville
Families across House District 109 send their children to public schools that will eventually operate under this new reading list, beginning with elementary grades in the 2030–2031 school year [KSAT, 2025]. Parents in Cedar Hill, Lancaster, DeSoto, and our surrounding communities deserve an accurate understanding of what their children will actually be asked to read — not a version filtered through campaign rhetoric designed to generate fear rather than inform.
Nothing in this list requires a teacher to lead prayer, teach religious doctrine, or instruct a child in any denomination’s theology. No student of any faith — Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or no faith at all — is asked to believe anything as a condition of completing an assignment. The ten Bible excerpts on this list function exactly like the Greek mythology, Aesop’s fables, and founding-era documents that surround them: as literary and historical texts that help students understand the culture, language, and ideas of the people who built this country and this state. That is a defensible, mainstream approach to literary and historical education, not an imposition of religion.
Ninety-six point six percent of the state’s new required reading list has no religious content whatsoever. The 3.4% that does — ten total excerpts across thirteen years of schooling — is there to help students understand the founding generation’s own words and worldview, the same reason we teach Greek mythology to understand Shakespeare. That is a matter of historical literacy, not indoctrination, and HD109 families deserve leaders who will tell them so honestly.
As your representative, I will continue to support literary standards that reflect the full, honest sweep of the history and culture that shaped America and Texas — including the undeniable role religious language and thought played in that history — while insisting, as this list itself insists, that no student is ever compelled into religious belief or practice in a Texas public school classroom. I will also continue to hold my opponent and other Democrat officials accountable when their public statements describe this kind of policy in terms the underlying facts do not support. HD109 families are capable of reading the actual list for themselves — which is why we have published it in full below.
Inspect the Data
The complete required reading list, organized by grade band, plus every Bible excerpt included and where it comes from. Read it for yourself.
| Grade | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Kinder | Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti | Gerald McDermott |
| Kinder | April Rain Song | Langston Hughes |
| Kinder | Are You My Mother? | P. D. Eastman |
| Kinder | The Bald Eagle | Norman Pearl |
| Kinder | Blueberries for Sal | Robert McCloskey |
| Kinder | The Cat in the Hat | Dr. Seuss |
| Kinder | Chicka Chicka Boom Boom | Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault |
| Kinder | Cinderella | Marcia Brown |
| Kinder | Classic Nursery Rhymes (selected excerpts) | Nicola Baxter (compiler) |
| Kinder | George Washington and the Cherry Tree | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Kinder | The Golden Rule ✝ | State of Texas |
| Kinder | The Grasshopper and the Ant | Jerry Pinkney (retold from Aesop) |
| Kinder | Goldilocks and the Three Bears | Jim Aylesworth |
| Kinder | The Keeping Quilt | Patricia Polacco |
| Kinder | L is for Lone Star: A Texas Alphabet | Carol Crane |
| Kinder | The Little Red Hen | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Kinder | The Lion and the Mouse | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Kinder | Luna Loves Art | Joseph Coelho |
| Kinder | A Picture Book of George Washington | David A. Adler |
| Kinder | A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison | David A. Adler |
| Kinder | The Runaway Bunny | Margaret Wise Brown |
| Kinder | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs | Anne Bowles |
| Kinder | The Snowy Day | Ezra Jack Keats |
| Kinder | Three Billy Goats Gruff | Paul Galdone |
| Kinder | The Three Little Pigs | Paul Galdone |
| Kinder | The Tortoise and the Hare | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Kinder | The Very Hungry Caterpillar | Eric Carle |
| Kinder | You Are Special | Max Lucado |
| Grade 1 | Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books | Kay Winters |
| Grade 1 | Ada Twist, Scientist | Andrea Beaty |
| Grade 1 | Amelia Bedelia's First Day of School | Herman Parish |
| Grade 1 | Exploring America's Symbols | State of Texas |
| Grade 1 | A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (selected excerpts) | Fred Rogers |
| Grade 1 | The Boy Who Cried Wolf | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Grade 1 | Classic Nursery Rhymes (selected excerpts) | Nicola Baxter |
| Grade 1 | Curious About the White House | Kate Waters |
| Grade 1 | Daniel Boone | Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét |
| Grade 1 | Danny and the Dinosaur | Syd Hoff |
| Grade 1 | Davy Crockett | Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét |
| Grade 1 | The Hare in the Moon | Angela McAllister |
| Grade 1 | The Fox and the Grapes | Aesop |
| Grade 1 | The Frog Prince | Angela McAllister |
| Grade 1 | Invitation | Shel Silverstein |
| Grade 1 | Jack and the Beanstalk | Thomas Nelson |
| Grade 1 | The Legend of the Bluebonnet | Tomie dePaola |
| Grade 1 | The Life of Paul Revere | Maria Nelson |
| Grade 1 | The Little Engine That Could | Watty Piper |
| Grade 1 | Lowly Worm Meets the Early Bird | Richard Scarry |
| Grade 1 | Madeline | Ludwig Bemelmans |
| Grade 1 | Medio Pollito/Half Chicken | Alma Flor Ada |
| Grade 1 | Millions of Cats | Wanda Gág |
| Grade 1 | Now and Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin | Gene Barretta |
| Grade 1 | The Parable of the Prodigal Son ✝ | State of Texas |
| Grade 1 | A Picture Book of Frederick Douglass | David A. Adler |
| Grade 1 | Pocahontas | Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét |
| Grade 1 | Rapunzel | Gill Doherty |
| Grade 1 | Red Riding Hood | James Marshall |
| Grade 1 | Rumpelstiltskin | Gill Doherty |
| Grade 1 | Swimmy | Leo Lionni |
| Grade 1 | The Tale of Peter Rabbit | Beatrix Potter |
| Grade 1 | The Ugly Duckling | Hans Christian Andersen |
| Grade 1 | Wolf in Sheep's Clothing | Aesop |
| Grade 2 | America Is... | Louise Borden |
| Grade 2 | Beauty and the Beast | Marianna Mayer |
| Grade 2 | Bluebonnet at the Alamo | Mary Brooke Casad |
| Grade 2 | Cam Jansen: The Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds | David A. Adler |
| Grade 2 | Clara Barton: Angel of the Battle Field | Tamara Hollingsworth |
| Grade 2 | The Courage of Sarah Noble | Alice Dalgliesh |
| Grade 2 | The Donkey in the Lion's Skin | Aesop |
| Grade 2 | Follow The Drinking Gourd | Jeanette Winter |
| Grade 2 | Falling Up | Shel Silverstein |
| Grade 2 | Flat Stanley: His Original Adventure! | Jeff Brown |
| Grade 2 | James Madison: The 4th President | Josh Gregory |
| Grade 2 | John Henry | Julius Lester |
| Grade 2 | Johnny Appleseed | Steven Kellogg |
| Grade 2 | The Legend of the Dipper | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Grade 2 | Paul Bunyan | Steven Kellogg |
| Grade 2 | Pecos Bill | Steven Kellogg |
| Grade 2 | The Magic Tree House #22: Revolutionary War on Wednesday | Mary Pope Osborne |
| Grade 2 | Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom | Carole Boston Weatherford |
| Grade 2 | The Mouse and the Motorcycle | Beverly Cleary |
| Grade 2 | The Patchwork Quilt | Valerie Flournoy |
| Grade 2 | Riding the Pony Express | Clyde Robert Bulla |
| Grade 2 | Sam The Minuteman | Nathaniel Benchley |
| Grade 2 | Stellaluna | Janell Cannon |
| Grade 2 | Susan B. Anthony | Laura K. Murray |
| Grade 2 | The Swing | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| Grade 2 | Teammates | Peter Golenbock |
| Grade 2 | The Thanksgiving Story | Alice Dalgliesh |
| Grade 2 | Try, Try Again | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Grade 2 | We the Kids: The Preamble to the Constitution | David Catrow |
| Grade 2 | Winnie-the-Pooh (Ch. 1-2) | A. A. Milne |
| Grade | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | Abraham Lincoln | Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét |
| Grade 3 | Archimedes and the Door of Science | Jeanne Bendick |
| Grade 3 | Charlotte's Web | E. B. White |
| Grade 3 | Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective | Donald J. Sobol |
| Grade 3 | Enemy Pie | Derek Munson |
| Grade 3 | The Fisherman and His Wife | Rachel Isadora |
| Grade 3 | George Washington | Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét |
| Grade 3 | Hercules and the Wagoner | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Grade 3 | Icarus and Daedalus | William F. Russell |
| Grade 3 | Inside Ancient Rome | L.L. Owens |
| Grade 3 | King Midas and the Golden Touch | Charlotte Craft |
| Grade 3 | The Librarian Who Measured the Earth | Kathryn Lasky |
| Grade 3 | Miss Rumphius | Barbara Cooney |
| Grade 3 | Mistakes that Worked (excerpts) | Charlotte Foltz Jones |
| Grade 3 | The Road to Damascus ✝ | State of Texas |
| Grade 3 | Seeker of Knowledge | James Rumford |
| Grade 3 | Smart | Shel Silverstein |
| Grade 3 | The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf | Aesop |
| Grade 3 | Stone Soup | Marcia Brown |
| Grade 3 | The Story of Benjamin Franklin | Shannon Anderson |
| Grade 3 | Thomas Jefferson | Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét |
| Grade 3 | The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse | Aesop |
| Grade 3 | What Do You Do With a Problem? | Kobi Yamada |
| Grade 3 | The Wind in the Willows (selected chapters) | Kenneth Grahame |
| Grade 4 | The Ant and the Dove | Aesop |
| Grade 4 | The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind | William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer |
| Grade 4 | Brave Irene | William Steig |
| Grade 4 | The Door in the Wall (Ch. 1) | Marguerite de Angeli |
| Grade 4 | Dreams | Langston Hughes |
| Grade 4 | Marquette in Iowa | Edward Eggleston |
| Grade 4 | Number the Stars | Lois Lowry |
| Grade 4 | Old Stormalong, The Seafaring Sailor | Carol Beach York |
| Grade 4 | The Road Not Taken | Robert Frost |
| Grade 4 | Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Grade 4 | Saint Francis of Assisi | Tim Ladwig |
| Grade 4 | Sea Fever | John Masefield |
| Grade 4 | The Spirit of the Renaissance ✝ | State of Texas |
| Grade 4 | St. George and the Dragon | William J. Bennett (editor) |
| Grade 4 | Stone Fox | John Reynolds Gardiner |
| Grade 4 | The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (Part 1) | Howard Pyle |
| Grade 4 | Sundiata: The Lion King of Mali | David Wisniewski |
| Grade 4 | Thunderstorm in Church | Louise A. Vernon |
| Grade 4 | Treasure Island (Classic Adventures) | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| Grade 4 | Who Was Leonardo Da Vinci? (Ch. 1-4) | Roberta Edwards |
| Grade 4 | The Wreck of the Zephyr | Chris Van Allsburg |
| Grade 5 | Adventures of Don Quijote | Argentina Palacios |
| Grade 5 | Journey to America (excerpt) | Sonia Levitin |
| Grade 5 | Casey at the Bat | Ernest Lawrence Thayer |
| Grade 5 | A Christmas Carol (Children's Version) | Charles Dickens |
| Grade 5 | The Colonization of Texas: Missions and Settlers | Stephanie Kuligowski |
| Grade 5 | Declaration of Independence in Translation | Amy Jane Leavitt |
| Grade 5 | The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe | C. S. Lewis |
| Grade 5 | Mark Twain | Stephen Vincent Benét and Rosemary Benét |
| Grade 5 | The Mayflower Compact | Brewster, Bradford, Winslow |
| Grade 5 | The Monkey and the Camel | Arnold Lobel |
| Grade 5 | A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution | Betsy Maestro |
| Grade 5 | The Phantom Tollbooth | Norton Juster |
| Grade 5 | Sam Houston: A Fearless Statesman | Joanne Mattern |
| Grade 5 | Thomas Jefferson | Mike Venezia |
| Grade 5 | The Village Blacksmith | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
| Grade 5 | Who Was Davy Crockett? (Ch. 1) | Gail Herman |
| Grade 5 | The Wright Brothers: Pioneers of American Aviation (excerpts) | Quentin Reynolds |
| Grade | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | Johnny Tremain | Esther Forbes |
| Grade 6 | Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night | Dylan Thomas |
| Grade 6 | Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death | Patrick Henry |
| Grade 6 | Paul Revere's Ride | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
| Grade 6 | The Prince and the Pauper: A Full Length Play | Anne Coulter Martens |
| Grade 6 | Seventh Grade | Gary Soto |
| Grade 6 | The Selfish Giant | Oscar Wilde |
| Grade 6 | Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story | John Fleischman |
| Grade 6 | The Hippocratic Oath (Modern) | Dr. Louis Lasagna |
| Grade 6 | The Human Abstract | William Blake |
| Grade 6 | Across Five Aprils | Irene Hunt |
| Grade 6 | Abraham Lincoln, A Man of Faith and Courage (Ch. 7) | Joe Wheeler |
| Grade 6 | The Blue and The Gray | Francis Miles Finch |
| Grade 6 | The Gettysburg Address | Abraham Lincoln |
| Grade 6 | All Creatures Great and Small | James Herriot |
| Grade 6 | The Power of the Dog | Rudyard Kipling |
| Grade 6 | A White Heron | Sarah Orne Jewett |
| Grade 6 | Do Not Be Anxious (Matthew 6:25-34) ✝ | New Testament (trans. ESV) |
| Grade 6 | The Peace of the Wild Things | Wendell Berry |
| Grade 7 | A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L'Engle |
| Grade 7 | A Sound of Thunder | Ray Bradbury |
| Grade 7 | Jonah and the Whale (Book of Jonah) ✝ | Old Testament (trans. NIRV) |
| Grade 7 | Kindness | Naomi Shihab Nye |
| Grade 7 | The Miracle Worker: A Play | William Gibson |
| Grade 7 | The Definition of Love (1 Corinthians 13) ✝ | New Testament (trans. ESV) |
| Grade 7 | Helen Keller's Speech, 1925 | Helen Keller |
| Grade 7 | Reflecting on Braille Literacy Month | Aaron Preece |
| Grade 7 | Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl | Anne Frank |
| Grade 7 | Blessed is the Match | Hannah Szenes |
| Grade 7 | Beyond Courage (Parts One-Three) | Doreen Rappaport |
| Grade 7 | Letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport | George Washington |
| Grade 7 | The Outsiders | S. E. Hinton |
| Grade 7 | Nothing Gold Can Stay | Robert Frost |
| Grade 7 | Thank You, M'am | Langston Hughes |
| Grade 7 | Watership Down | Richard Adams |
| Grade 7 | Duty, Honor, Country | Douglas MacArthur |
| Grade 7 | Ulysses S. Grant's General Order 108 | Ulysses S. Grant |
| Grade 7 | The Shepherd's Psalm (Psalm 23) ✝ | Old Testament (trans. KJV) |
| Grade 8 | Isaac's Storm | Erik Larson |
| Grade 8 | The Hurricane | José María Heredia |
| Grade 8 | The Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
| Grade 8 | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (3 stories) | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Grade 8 | The Celebrated Jumping Frog | Mark Twain |
| Grade 8 | The Tell-Tale Heart | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Grade 8 | The Giver | Lois Lowry |
| Grade 8 | Harrison Bergeron | Kurt Vonnegut |
| Grade 8 | The Man in the Arena Passage | Teddy Roosevelt |
| Grade 8 | O Me! O Life! | Walt Whitman |
| Grade 8 | The Tempest | William Shakespeare |
| Grade 8 | Speech to the Troops at Tilbury | Queen Elizabeth I |
| Grade 8 | The Lady, or the Tiger? | Frank R. Stockton |
| Grade 8 | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
| Grade 8 | Harlem: A Dream Deferred | Langston Hughes |
| Grade 8 | I Have a Dream | Martin Luther King, Jr. |
| Grade 8 | Inaugural Address | John F. Kennedy |
| Grade 8 | The Eight Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) ✝ | New Testament (trans. KJV) |
| Grade 8 | What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? | Frederick Douglass |
| Course | Title | Author |
|---|---|---|
| English I | Animal Farm | George Orwell |
| English I | Federalist Papers No. 10 | James Madison |
| English I | Federalist Papers No. 51 | James Madison |
| English I | I, Pencil | Leonard E. Read |
| English I | Ozymandias | Percy Bysshe Shelley |
| English I | The Clever Teens' Guide to the Russian Revolution | Felix Rhodes |
| English I | Antigone | Sophocles |
| English I | Thanatopsis | William Cullen Bryant |
| English I | The Monkey's Paw | W. W. Jacobs |
| English I | Great Expectations | Charles Dickens |
| English I | Love Is Not All | Edna St. Vincent Millay |
| English I | A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain (Ch. 1, 2, 6) | Michael Paterson |
| English I | The Odyssey | Homer |
| English I | David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) ✝ | Old Testament (trans. NIRV) |
| English I | Odysseus | W. S. Merwin |
| English I | Night | Elie Wiesel |
| English I | Lamentations 3 ✝ | Old Testament (trans. JPS Tanakh 1917) |
| English I | The Perils of Indifference | Elie Wiesel |
| English I | The Survivor | Primo Levi |
| English II | Beowulf | Unknown Poet |
| English II | The Charge of the Light Brigade | Alfred Lord Tennyson |
| English II | Twelve Angry Men | Reginald Rose |
| English II | Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury |
| English II | Dear Mr. McCarthy, I Am Very Real | Kurt Vonnegut |
| English II | What is Capitalism? | Ayn Rand |
| English II | Flattering Unction | Thomas Sowell |
| English II | The Veldt | Ray Bradbury |
| English II | Frankenstein | Mary Shelley |
| English II | Prometheus | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
| English II | The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) ✝ | Old Testament (trans. NIRV) |
| English II | Why Frankenstein Matters | Audrey Shafer |
| English II | A Separate Peace | John Knowles |
| English II | The Necklace | Guy de Maupassant |
| English II | The Scarlet Ibis | James Hurst |
| English II | The Soldier | Rupert Brooke |
| English II | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare |
| English II | Eulogy for President Reagan | Margaret Thatcher |
| English II | Pericles' Funeral Oration | Thucydides |
| English II | The Raven | Edgar Allan Poe |
| English III | The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho |
| English III | To Build a Fire | Jack London |
| English III | We Choose to Go to the Moon | John F. Kennedy |
| English III | Ithaka | C.P. Cavafy |
| English III | Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck |
| English III | To Everything There Is a Season (Ecclesiastes 3) ✝ | Old Testament (trans. KJV) |
| English III | First Inaugural Address | Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
| English III | I'd Rather Not Be on Relief | Lester Hunter |
| English III | The Chrysanthemums | John Steinbeck |
| English III | To a Mouse | Robert Burns |
| English III | The Crucible | Arthur Miller |
| English III | Federalist Paper No. 78 | Alexander Hamilton |
| English III | Lyceum Address | Abraham Lincoln |
| English III | Democracy in America (excerpt) | Alexis de Tocqueville |
| English III | Young Goodman Brown | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| English III | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| English III | Annual Message (Four Freedoms) | Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
| English III | Labor Unions in A Free Market | Ernest van den Haag |
| English III | Only Yesterday (excerpts) | Frederick Lewis Allen |
| English III | We Wear the Mask | Paul Lawrence Dunbar |
| English III | The Scarlet Letter | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| English III | If | Rudyard Kipling |
| English III | The Minister's Black Veil | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| English IV | Hamlet | William Shakespeare |
| English IV | Hamlet and His Problems | T. S. Eliot |
| English IV | The Death of Ivan Ilych | Leo Tolstoy |
| English IV | The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | T. S. Eliot |
| English IV | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen |
| English IV | "Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers | Emily Dickinson |
| English IV | The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne | Anthony Trollope |
| English IV | When I Was One-and-Twenty | A. E. Housman |
| English IV | The Divine Comedy | Dante Alighieri |
| English IV | The Book of Job (Ch. 1-7, 11, 14, 19, 28, 38-42) ✝ | Old Testament (trans. NIRV) |
| English IV | I've Been to the Mountaintop | Martin Luther King, Jr. |
| English IV | The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction (Ch. 1-4) | Miri Rubin |
| English IV | Up From Slavery | Booker T. Washington |
| English IV | Everyday Use | Alice Walker |
| English IV | Frederick Douglass (poem) | Robert Hayden |
| English IV | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Ch. 1) | Frederick Douglass |
| English IV | A Psalm of Life | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
| English IV | Walden | Henry David Thoreau |
| English IV | Autobiography (Part One) | Benjamin Franklin |
| English IV | The Open Boat | Stephen Crane |
| Grade/Course | Passage | Source Text & Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | Do Not Be Anxious (Matthew 6:25-34) | New Testament (trans. ESV) |
| Grade 7 | Jonah and the Whale (Book of Jonah) | Old Testament (trans. NIRV) |
| Grade 7 | The Definition of Love (1 Corinthians 13) | New Testament (trans. ESV) |
| Grade 7 | The Shepherd's Psalm (Psalm 23) | Old Testament (trans. KJV) |
| Grade 8 | The Eight Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) | New Testament (trans. KJV) |
| English I | David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17) | Old Testament (trans. NIRV) |
| English I | Lamentations 3 | Old Testament (trans. JPS Tanakh 1917) |
| English II | The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) | Old Testament (trans. NIRV) |
| English III | To Everything There Is a Season (Ecclesiastes 3) | Old Testament (trans. KJV) |
| English IV | The Book of Job (Ch. 1-7, 11, 14, 19, 28, 38-42) | Old Testament (trans. NIRV) |
Sources & Annotated Bibliography
Every factual claim in this article is sourced to an original document, official record, or the subject’s own recorded words. Where a claim could not be independently verified, we say so explicitly rather than fabricate a source.
The Reading List & the Vote — Sections 1, 2, 5
Texas State Board of Education. (2026). Final Adopted K-12 Literary Works List. Texas Education Agency.
The primary source document for every title, author, and grade placement in this article, including all ten Bible excerpts. Retrieved directly from the SBOE’s official site.
KSAT. (2025, November 24). Texas considers first state-mandated reading list for grades K-12.
Background on House Bill 1605, the process timeline, and the 2030–2031 implementation schedule.
Clerical Whispers / wire reporting. (2026, June 28). Texas to make Bible readings mandatory for millions of students.
Source for the 9–5 final vote tally and the one Republican board member who voted with Democrats against final adoption.
WSWS. (2026, June 29). Texas moves to impose Christian nationalist curriculum in public schools.
Confirms the 9–5 vote breakdown and party alignment; used here strictly for its factual vote reporting, not its editorial framing.
CBS Austin. (2026, June 25). Texas education board approves new standards, adds Bible passages to required reading list.
Confirms specific titles added (Jonah and the Whale, David and Goliath) and quotes Texas Freedom Network representative Andrew Freeman.
FOX 4 KDFW. (2026, June 26). Texas leaders approve Bible stories as required reading [video report].
Broadcast confirmation of the 9–5 vote and on-record statements from board members on both sides of the vote.
Reuters, via US News. (2026, June 26). Texas State School Board Approves Mandated Reading List Including Bible Passages.
Confirms vote tally (9-5, one member absent) and includes on-record statement from Americans United president Rachel Laser.
Freedom From Religion Foundation. (2026, June 25). FFRF denounces final approval of bible-infused Texas reading list [press release].
Opposition-side statement quoted directly for balance; describes the reading requirements from FFRF’s perspective.
New York Post. (2026, June 26). Bible stories approved as required reading across Texas public schools.
Source for Texas Freedom Network spokesperson Elva Mendoza’s direct quote on the list.
Texas Freedom Network. (2024, November 21). What You Need to Know about the Texas State Board of Education’s Bible Curriculum Decision.
Covers the separate, earlier 8–7 vote on the optional 2024 Bluebonnet elementary curriculum, clearly distinguished in this article from the 2026 mandatory reading list.
CNN. (2024, November 22). Texas school board approves optional curriculum that incorporates Bible lessons for K-5 classes.
Confirms the optional, district-choice nature of the 2024 Bluebonnet curriculum, and the $60-per-student funding incentive tied to its adoption.
The Founders and the Bible — Section 3
Lutz, D. S., & Hyneman, C. S. (1988). The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought. American Political Science Review, 82(1).
The original peer-reviewed study of roughly 15,000 founding-era writings finding the Bible was the most-cited source overall (34% of direct quotations), more than any other single author.
Total Grace Ministries. (2022, November 16). Chapter Twenty-eight — Our Founding Documents.
Secondary summary of the Lutz & Hyneman findings, including the specific breakdown of Montesquieu (8.3%), Blackstone (7.9%), and Locke (2.9%) citation shares relative to the Bible.
Throckmorton, W. (2026, April 22). Did the Founders Quote the Bible More Than Any Other Source? Substack.
Presented for balance: a critical review noting that when reprinted sermons are excluded from the Lutz-Hyneman sample, the Bible’s citation share drops to roughly 8.5%, and that Bible citations were rare in the specific 1787–1788 Federalist debates.
Anonymous author. (n.d.). How often did the founders quote the Bible? Candst.tripod.com.
Additional critical review of the same Lutz-Hyneman dataset, included to present the full range of scholarly interpretation rather than a single favorable reading.
Statements by James Talarico — Section 4
Fox News. (2026, January 29). Texas Democrat James Talarico faces outrage over atheist comments.
Direct quote: “instead of forcing school children to read the Bible against their wills…” — from the “Politics War Room” podcast, January 2026.
WFMD. (2026, April 23). Texas Dem James Talarico rips ‘un-Christian’ court decision on what’s allowed in classrooms.
Source for Talarico’s CNN remarks calling the Ten Commandments display ruling “deeply un-Christian” and his “tyrant on a mission from God” comment.
Aframnews. (2024, August 12). Rep. James Talarico Calls Out Texas Education Commissioner for Infusing State Curriculum with Christian Nationalism.
Source for Talarico’s statement that the 2024 elementary curriculum taught “Christian Bible stories as historical fact” and his “public schools are not Sunday schools” quote.
Washington Times. (2026, May 30). James Talarico, wrong for Texas and America [opinion/analysis].
Compiles multiple direct Talarico quotes over several years for context; used only for its documented direct quotations, not its editorial conclusions.
Aicha Davis’s Record — Section 4
Spectrum News. (2024, July 12). Texas may pay schools to use curriculum critics call overtly Christian.
Direct on-record quote from then-SBOE member Aicha Davis: “That’s when all of the stuff started getting introduced with the biblical references.”
The 74 Million. (2024, November 18). In Close Vote, Texas Approves Reading Program Laden With Bible Lessons.
Confirms Aicha Davis’s documented opposition to the 2024 curriculum as an SBOE member before she left the board in August 2024 to run for the Texas House.
Davis for Texas campaign website. (2026). On the Issues. davisfortexas.com.
Current campaign platform statement describing public education as her top priority and characterizing Republican curriculum efforts as attempts to “rewrite science and erase history.”
Transparency note. We conducted an extensive search for a direct, current (2026) public statement from Rep. Davis specifically addressing the June 26, 2026 reading-list vote and did not locate one attributable to her by name. We have not fabricated a quote to fill that gap. Her position is instead documented through her established record on this exact category of policy question while she served on the SBOE, and through her party’s and her successor colleagues’ public statements on this specific vote.