Spokespeople available in Spanish and English for additional comment or interview at request
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 24, 2025
CONTACT: Imelda Mejia (she/her), [email protected]
AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Freedom Network today expressed concern that the appointment of David Barton to a key advisory panel for revising the state’s social studies standards could politicize what should be an academic process focused on educational excellence.
“This appointment is a flashing red light warning that the social studies overhaul appears already to be headed off the rails and into a political swamp of misinformation and distortions,” said Carisa Lopez, deputy director of the Texas Freedom Network. “The board members who appointed this phony historian clearly care more about pushing a political agenda than teaching millions of Texas kids the truth in our public schools.”
Barton served as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1997 to 2006, He is also the founder of WallBuilders, a political advocacy organization based in the north Texas city of Aledo. WallBuilders promotes the political argument that our nation was founded on Christian principles and that its laws should reflect conservative biblical values as Barton interprets them.
Republican state board members Julie Pickren and Brandon Hall announced Friday that they have appointed him to a panel of “content advisors” who will help guide the overhaul of the social studies standards between now and June 2026. Those standards will guide what students will learn in their history, government and other social studies classes over the next decade.
Although Pickren and Hall called Barton a historian, he was actually a religious education major from Oral Roberts University and has no formal training in the field.
His lack of training as a historian is evident in much of his work, including his 2012 book about Thomas Jefferson. Real historians widely panned that book as filled with mistruths and misinformation about the nation’s third president and author of the Declaration of Independence. Barton’s publisher came to the same conclusion later that year and ceased publication and distribution of the book.
Barton served on a similar State Board of Education advisory panel during the last major overhaul of the Texas social studies standards in 2009-10. Barton at the time insisted that the new social studies standards teach students that the Bible was a major influence on the Constitution and American law.
The final standards adopted by the Republican-dominated board required students to learn that Moses from the Bible was a major influence on the American founding and our laws. They also called into question the separation of church and state, a key constitutional principle that Barton has called a “myth.”
Barton also criticized the inclusion of Cesar Chavez in earlier standards, saying the late labor organizer and civil rights icon should not “be heralded to students as someone ‘who modeled active participation in the democratic process.’”
Even the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute called the final version of the history standards adopted by the state board in 2010 a “politicized distortion of history” that was “filled with misrepresentation at every turn.”
The State Board of Education shut down a new overhaul of the social studies standards in 2022 after far-right groups criticized drafts that were more inclusive of the experiences and contributions of the diverse communities in our nation’s history. The Legislature has required the board to revise the social studies standard by July 2026.
The state board has not yet announced the appointment of all members of the advisory panel to which Barton has been named. Appointment to that panel requires the support of at least two board members.
###
The Texas Freedom Network (tfn.org) is a grassroots organization of religious and community leaders and young Texans building an informed and effective movement for equality and social justice.
