TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The state of Florida has rejected at least 50 textbooks in its search for math materials aligning to the new Florida Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) Standards.
According to a news release on Friday, the list approved by Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran followed a thorough review of submissions at the Department, which found 41 percent of the submitted textbooks were impermissible with either Florida’s new standards or contained prohibited topics – the most in Florida’s history.
“It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.
The state rejected 54 of 132 math textbooks. Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics. The state has not specified the exact language in the books made them inappropriate.
“Math is about getting the right answer. And we want kids to learn to think so they get the right answer. It’s not about how you feel about the problem. Or to introduce some of these other things,” said DeSantis.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools says the district is awaiting feedback as to why they titles were rejected.
“This is what Communism and socialists have done in North Korea, in Cuba, in Venezuela,” said Karla Hernandez-Mats, United Teachers of Dade President.
Broward County Public Schools released a statement on Monday:
“In preparation for the 2022/23 school year, the Broward County Public Schools Academics Department planned on presenting its recommendations for math instructional material for approval at the Tuesday, April 19, Regular School Board Meeting. Due to the Florida Department of Education’s April 15, 2022, announcement regarding the list of approved textbooks, the District will be withdrawing the Board item pending further review and guidance from FLDOE. We defer to the FLDOE for specific reasons for its decision.”
President of the Broward Teacher’s Union, Anna Fusco, said it could be the wording in some of the math problems that may reference, for example, having same sex parents.
“A lot of our math is tied with literary because there is a lot of reading of word problems,” said Fusco.
Fusco also said she believes it could be political and issues like critical race theory is not even a topic covered in early childhood education.
“It’s definitely catering to a certain group that are homophobic and only want to deal with the dominant, what they may still feel, is the white race,” said Fusco.
Christopher Finan, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship said the decision has many scratching their heads.
“The state has an obligation to its citizens to explain what it’s done, because it’s completely incomprehensible right now,” said Finan.
In June 2021, Florida’s state Board of Education banned “critical race theory” from public school classrooms, adopting new rules it said would shield school children from curriculum that could “distort historical events.”
Florida law already requires schools to provide instruction on a host of fundamentals, including the Declaration of Independence, the Holocaust and African American history. Current events, including the killings of Black people by police, have intensified debates.
The rules say classroom instruction “must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events.” It goes on to mention the Holocaust, slavery and the Civil War, as well as the civil rights movement and the contributions of Blacks, Hispanics and women to the country.