CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Texas Education Agency gave a presentation at the Solomon P. Ortiz Center on Friday regarding tighter curriculum updates, especially as it relates to reading literacy.
TEA Education Commissioner Mike Morath said that he has noticed alarming statistics when it comes to reading comprehension skills across the state.
"Slightly less than 50 percent of our third graders are reading on grade level, regardless of the region you're in," he said.
House Bill 1605, which was passed in the 88th Texas Legislative Session, was designed to give teachers high quality resources for student instruction. Morath said that the resources from the bill will help teachers limit the time they need to put together lesson plans. The resource comes in the form of Pilot Texas Open Education Resources (OER) textbooks.
"There are lessons on phonics, on handwriting, both print and cursive, on spelling, on grammar, on syntax, on writing paragraphs," he said.
District 32 Texas Representative Todd Hunter said part of the new curriculum will also highlight a significant pioneer of South Texas history, Dr. Hector P. Garcia.
"He was a practicing doctor. He was actually very good at providing medical help throughout the entire South Texas region," he said.
Morath said the tightened curriculum will help fill those gaps that were left during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the height of the pandemic, many school districts transitioned to remote learning to better protect students from the virus.
Due to that transition, Morath said students experienced intense setbacks.
"Unfortunately, there were a lot of lost learning opportunities for students all over the state," he said.
Returning to basic skills is something Morath said will help provide students with a "very robust vocabulary, very broad knowledge of the world. This is what makes students really good readers."
The TEA is currently in what Morath calls the "public vetting and review process." He said that they plan to provide a finalized version of this plan to the Texas Board of Education in November. He said that if it meets their approval, school districts could start printing the materials almost immediately.
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