A small school district in southwestern Colorado is rolling out an elementary reading curriculum built for Texas classrooms and steeped in biblical content, and officials made the choice with little public discussion over the summer. Montezuma-Cortez School District, which serves about 2,200 students, will use the Bluebonnet Learning curriculum at its three elementary schools starting this fall, tying the decision to a broader school-turnaround plan borrowed from Houston.
The move, first reported by Westword, comes as Montezuma-Cortez adopts the New Education System, a school-improvement model created by Mike Miles, according to the outlet's reporting. The district received an overall Improvement Plan rating from the Colorado Department of Education for 2025 after stagnant test scores, and its elementary schools are a mixed bag — one performs far above the state average on literacy and math tests, while two others perform far below it. Superintendent Eddie Ramirez leads the roughly 2,500-student district, where 61% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
Following Houston's Lead, Not a State Review
Montezuma-Cortez's path to Bluebonnet ran through Houston. The Houston school district switched from Core Knowledge Language Arts to Bluebonnet in June, and Montezuma-Cortez officials followed that switch, according to Westword's reporting. The Montezuma-Cortez school board — which has seven members — approved a curriculum-use agreement with Houston in May, and education partners will receive $300,000 to help the district with school improvement, per the same reporting.
District leaders had originally planned to use Core Knowledge Language Arts, the curriculum from which Bluebonnet was developed, before switching. Ericka Burns, according to Westword, said in a July 21 statement that using Houston's curriculum makes it easier to apply Houston's school-improvement model but is not strictly necessary. Kristine Frech-Barstow, in an email cited by the outlet, said Bluebonnet and Core Knowledge Language Arts are different curricula — and Colorado's approval of the latter does not extend to the former.
Colorado is a local-control state, and districts are not required to use state-approved reading programs. But the Colorado Department of Education told Westword that districts opting out of the state's advisory list must still ensure their chosen programs are evidence-based and meet state academic standards. Mike Lynch, a district official quoted in the reporting, said he does not know how well Bluebonnet matches Colorado standards or whether it is evidence-based, adding that the district should focus on teaching children to read and do math before worrying more about alignment with state standards. Lynch said the district is following Houston's lead because of that district's rapid and, in his telling, phenomenal turnaround history — Houston schools under the New Education System have made significant gains on state tests in recent years, per the article.
No Board Vote, No State Vetting
Unlike a typical curriculum change, Bluebonnet's adoption in Montezuma-Cortez did not go through a public review process or a school board vote, according to Westword's reporting. The curriculum also was never vetted by Colorado state evaluators. Montezuma-Cortez officials could have chosen from more than 20 state-approved elementary reading programs but instead picked Bluebonnet because the district had already adopted Houston's reform model, the outlet reported.
Bluebonnet itself has a rocky history. Texas developed the curriculum by adapting an existing reading program from Amplify, and the Texas State Board of Education approved it narrowly in 2024 in what PBS News reported was an 8-7 vote on November 22 of that year, over extensive public opposition. Texas House Bill 1605 had authorized the Texas Education Agency to create the state-owned materials and offered districts a $40-per-student incentive to adopt them, plus another $20 per student for printing, according to the Texas Education Agency. Texas districts still receive financial incentives from the state for adopting Bluebonnet, per Westword's reporting.
Quality Problems Have Followed the Rollout
The curriculum's quality has also come under fire. Hoodline previously reported that the Texas school board hit pause on 4,200 Bluebonnet errors after the Texas Education Agency identified roughly that many typos, formatting glitches, and image-licensing issues across the materials, delaying a cleanup package the SBOE was set to approve in February. The Texas Education Agency announced in June that it would spend $8 million to fix thousands of errors in the curriculum, and Westword's reporting notes the errors included typos, formatting problems, and copyright violations.
Biblical Content Raises Constitutional Questions
Bluebonnet's biblical content is central to the controversy. According to Westword, the curriculum includes kindergarten lessons on the days of creation in Genesis, a first-grade lesson on the parable of the prodigal son, a second-grade lesson on Esther, a Persian queen from the Bible, and a fifth-grade lesson on biblical allegories in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Kindergarten lessons also touch on Texas history and civics, including Sam Houston, the Texas State Capitol, the Texas flag, and the Texas Pledge of Allegiance, the outlet reported.
Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, told Westword that some of Bluebonnet's biblical content is inappropriate for its grade level and that the curriculum mischaracterizes some Bible stories, presenting them too literalistically in places. Chancey also said the material fails to mention that Esther promotes killing enemies of the Jews at the end of the biblical story and that the book of Esther does not mention God at all — while Bluebonnet, he said, gives scant attention to religious traditions outside Christianity.
Brent Strawn, a religion and law professor at Duke University who told Westword he has not reviewed the curriculum himself, said familiarity with Bible stories can help students understand broader cultural references. But he also said promoting or prescribing one religion over others is generally considered illegal under the Constitution's Establishment Clause, which bars government promotion or prescription of one religion over others. Strawn said he worries the cultural-literacy rationale could be used to instill Christian values and beliefs in public-school children. The Establishment Clause tension traces back to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1963 ruling in Abington School District v. Schempp, which found devotional Bible reading in public schools unconstitutional while allowing objective study of the Bible for its literary or historical value.
Texas officials have defended Bluebonnet's biblical content as cultural literacy rather than religious endorsement, pointing to a state law requiring instructional materials to cover religious literature and its impact on history and culture — a defense Hoodline detailed in its coverage of San Antonio's own Bluebonnet debate. That fight has echoed in other Texas districts: Hoodline reported that Katy ISD faced sharp pushback from parents in 2025 over Bluebonnet's emphasis on Christian passages, part of a broader pattern of community objections across the state.
A Curriculum's Creator With Ties to the District
The New Education System driving Montezuma-Cortez's turnaround plan traces back to Mike Miles, who founded Third Future Schools in Colorado in 2016 as a charter turnaround network built on standardized, explicit teacher-led instruction and high-paced daily routines, a model Hoodline profiled in its report on a separate Colorado charter fight. The system also includes training for teachers and principals and emphasizes keeping students engaged through fast-paced routines, according to Westword's reporting.
Miles has faced his own scrutiny over financial ties to that network. After Texas House Bill 3372 barred superintendents from accepting paid consulting work from education companies or charter networks, Houston ISD Superintendent Miles cancelled a $120,000-per-year consulting contract with Third Future Schools, according to the Houston Chronicle. For Montezuma-Cortez, the appeal of the New Education System model appears to be less about ideology and more about results: Lynch has said the district is banking on the same kind of turnaround Houston has claimed under Miles's leadership, even as questions remain about whether the curriculum that comes bundled with it fits Colorado classrooms or Colorado law.
