Harris County Moms for Liberty attacks Texas ethnic studies courses

Harris County Moms for Liberty is urging Texas legislators and State Board of Education members to review ethnic studies courses after calling some classroom material “Marxist-Leninist indoctrination” and arguing that tax dollars are funding it. The fight has landed in Houston first, where a state-approved Mexican American Studies course was built from a Houston Independent School District model.

Texas already has two standalone ethnic studies options in high school. On April 13, 2018, the State Board of Education voted to begin approving Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Mexican American Studies using a Houston ISD course as the basis. On April 17, 2020, the board unanimously approved African American Studies standards. Texas became the first state to offer standalone Mexican American Studies and African American Studies high school courses.

The Texas Education Agency says TEKS are the state standards for what students should know and be able to do, and the State Board of Education has legislative authority to adopt them. TEA says the current social studies TEKS were revised to align with legislative requirements passed in the 87th Legislature and were implemented in the 2024-2025 school year. Those standards govern what districts teach, which makes the debate about ethnic studies less about slogans and more about who decides the content in public classrooms.

The issue also intersects with the Legislature. In 2025, House Bill 178 sought to expand the social studies foundation curriculum to include ethnic studies more broadly. Committee analysis said it would make ethnic studies part of the social studies component for districts offering K-12, and one analysis said the change would apply to students entering ninth grade in the 2026-2027 school year or later. That would have pushed the question beyond elective courses and into the core curriculum.

The debate is unfolding as the State Board of Education rewrites parts of the state’s broader curriculum. The board held special meetings on social studies standards on February 25, 2026, and later, on June 26, approved new K-8 social studies TEKS and a required literature reading list while postponing final action on some major high school courses. Texas Values and other conservative groups praised the June changes as restoring emphasis on American history, while critics said the revisions could reduce attention to race, slavery and cultural diversity.

In Harris County, where Houston helped shape the first Mexican American Studies standards and school systems serve one of the state’s largest and most diverse student populations, the argument is no longer abstract. The next round of decisions will determine whether ethnic studies remain specialized courses or become part of the foundation every Texas student must take.