Colorado school district rejects controversial reading curriculum because of errors, Texas focus

By Eva-Marie Ayala, The Texas Tribune
August 18, 2026

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

On Wednesday, elementary schools in a small southwestern Colorado district stopped using a controversial reading curriculum developed by the state of Texas.

It was the third day of school.

The sudden shift came a day after the Montezuma-Cortez school board voted 4-3 to reject the new curriculum, called Bluebonnet, and four days after the district’s superintendent pledged that Biblical material would be removed from lessons.

The controversy over Bluebonnet likely has staff at the district’s three elementary schools scrambling for replacement lessons this week. The debate has also raised questions about the number of errors in the curriculum, whether a Texas-built product is right for Colorado students, and how the curriculum was adopted with little notice over the summer.

Colorado school districts don’t have to use state-approved reading curriculum, but they must ensure their curriculum meets state academic standards.

Justin Schmitt, the district’s executive director of academic services, didn’t specify what reading curriculum the district’s elementary schools are using now.

He said by email that district leaders are working with school staff on next steps.

Board Vice President Laura DeWitt, who has a fifth grade daughter, said at Tuesday’s board meeting that she looked at some of the Bluebonnet materials on the first day of school and found what she described as “robot errors” — mistakes probably generated by AI.

A story about a Japanese man who visited Houston to plant rice in 1904 includes a map that shows Houston next to the Florida panhandle, instead of in Texas.

DeWitt showed a printout of the erroneous map at the meeting, drawing a chuckle from one person and a “wow” from someone else.

Such mistakes are in addition to thousands of mistakes in Bluebonnet that Texas is already paying $8 million to fix.

Board member Barbara Mate said when she visited classrooms on the first couple days of school, she saw reading lessons centered on Texas.

“I viewed a lot of stuff about Texas and Houston and San Antonio and migrant workers, and Texas and Texas,” she said. “I just wondered why we’re not representing our current demographic.”

The 2,200-student Montezuma-Cortez district in May adopted a school improvement model borrowed from the Houston school district. When that district, the largest in Texas, adopted Bluebonnet in late June, Montezuma-Cortez administrators soon followed suit.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Montezuma-Cortez board members raised concerns that Bluebonnet’s use was announced just weeks before the school year started with no analysis to ensure it meets Colorado academic standards, no public review process, and no school board vote.

While several board members were critical of Bluebonnet, most said they supported the school improvement model from Houston. It’s called the New Education System and is a highly structured system that includes fast-paced teacher-led instruction, daily monitoring of student progress, and immediate re-teaching for students who aren’t proficient.

Some board members asked Superintendent Eddie Ramirez pointed questions about mysterious changes to an agreement with the Houston school district the board approved in May. The original version didn’t mention Bluebonnet, but the one Ramirez signed in June did.

Ramirez assigned blame to district lawyers, and said he didn’t notice the change.

“What I am testifying to you and telling the board here tonight is that I had no knowledge that it said Bluebonnet,” he said. “I signed the document thinking that it was vetted by the lawyer, and that it was agreed upon.”

Some board members seemed skeptical of Ramirez’s explanation and suggested there are “integrity issues” at play, but said it was a matter to be addressed another day.

Board member Mike Lynch defended Ramirez.

“He’s trying to implement something for our district. The board’s job is the why, and the superintendent’s job is the how,” he said. “He was doing the how and the document was changed without his knowledge.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.