Hi! It’s Lily on the national desk today. Today’s big story comes out of Colorado … and Texas. We’ve got a lot to share with you from the Lone Star State today, actually. 

Stick around to read about the renewed effort to stop schools from “passing the trash,” and to get a peek at what back-to-school shopping lists say about the aesthetic values of teens today.

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A rural school district in Colorado has adopted Houston’s school improvement model, which includes a controversial curriculum that was created by Texas’ state education agency and is infused with religious content.

The curriculum, called Bluebonnet, has attracted critics for its reliance on material from the Bible. Among the lessons: Kindergartners learn about the days of Creation in the Book of Genesis, and first graders learn about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Texas also had to pay millions of dollars to fix errors in Bluebonnet materials, including copyright problems and typos.

Houston’s school improvement model, called the New Education System, is also controversial. Spearheaded by Mike Miles, the superintendent appointed to lead Houston’s school district as part of the ongoing state takeover, the New Education System emphasizes teacher-led instruction and ongoing training for educators. 

While some Houston schools have improved academically under Miles’ leadership, some are unhappy about prescriptive curriculums and other seemingly strict measures. 

And it looks like Miles’ model is spreading beyond Texas, including to the tiny Montezuma-Cortez school district in Colorado, as well as a school district in Oregon.

Both Bluebonnet and the New Education System model highlight two of the most divisive education debates across the country: how school and district turnarounds should work, and whether religion has any place in public school. 

Conservatives have attempted in recent years to blur boundaries around religion in public education. Several states, including Texas, have pushed for the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and there have been attempts to open religious charter schools.

After Chalkbeat reported on Montezuma-Cortez’s decision, the district announced it would remove many religious references from the Bluebonnet curriculum.

Read the full story here.

Speaking of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott this week said he wants stricter penalties imposed on educators convicted of abusing students, The Texas Tribune reported, with a minimum of 10 years in prison for teacher misconduct. 

The state reported over 1,700 allegations of inappropriate romantic and sexual relationships or communication between teachers and students in 2026, more than three times the number from 2025. Texas’ House Speaker, a key lawmaker, has already signaled his support.

The proposal in Texas comes after the Trump administration announced a federal push in July to investigate abuse of students by educators, and specifically a crackdown on school districts’ handling of such cases.

“Sexual predators who operate within the walls of American schools depend on institutional silence and complacency,” reads a July 10 letter signed by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. In the letter, McMahon threatened to withhold federal funding from schools failing to protect children. The Education Department opened up investigations into 20 school districts over misconduct.

McMahon specifically cited an investigation by ProPublica and KQED, which found critical gaps in California’s system for disciplining teachers, where teachers reported for sexual harassment and other misconduct in a district have been allowed to continue teaching elsewhere.

Concerns over what’s often been called “passing the trash” aren’t new. But Abbott’s proposal in Texas, the effort by the federal government, and a proposal in Illinois that would also add protections against sexual misconduct, all signal renewed awareness.

Despite all that, there may not be enough folks on the roster in federal and state agencies to investigate these allegations in a timely manner. 

As the federal government opens up new investigations into districts, there are still older civil rights investigations waiting to be resolved within the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. The Washington Post reported that at least one educator sexual misconduct case — of a principal accused of touching a student in a way that made her feel uncomfortable — is among stalled sexual harassment cases in that office.

And multiple states including Utah, Oregon, and Wisconsin have experienced funding issues or staffing shortages contributing to a backlog of cases.

That’s the percent rise in written state complaints about special education for the past school year, according to data from the Council for Exceptional Children and the National Association of State Directors of Special Education. The jump could indicate families are increasingly turning to state channels to lodge complaints, instead of the federal Office for Civil Rights.

That’s Abilene, a 17-year-old in Ohio sharing her school supply strategy for the upcoming (or current, depending on where you live!) school year. Yahoo reporters surveyed a group of high school students about their shopping lists for the year, with some interesting findings. 

Beyond the frenzy for Apple products and Lululemon, teens are after old school supplies like Trapper Keepers and mechanical pencils … as long as they’re cute.