Departing Florida Education Secretary Richard Corcoran rejected roughly two of every five math textbooks proposed for public schools because they conflicted with Florida’s new state standards or “contained prohibited topics,” the Education Department said in a press release Friday.
That, the department added, was the most in Florida’s history.
In its statement, the DOE noted that it was firming up the roster of math instructional materials for Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, or BEST, Standards.
After what it called a “thorough review,” the department refused to utilize 41 percent of the 132 submitted textbooks.
Those rejected textbooks “included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the DOE release said.
The number was even more shocking for younger grades. In grades K-5, an “alarming” 71 percent of proposed textbooks “were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies,” the DOE said.
While many people understand the anti-white tenets of CRT, or recognize that Common Core, the federal government’s old education standards that have largely disappeared, including when Gov. Ron DeSantis ended the program in 2019.
SEL, however, may be a new one, although as an academic theory it dates to the 1960s.
The conservative website The Federalist noted that SEL applies universal mental health assessments to measure children on self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
“Under such a system teachers become essentially therapists, and students become essentially patients. Supposedly this will clear away the psychological deadwood that obstructs a student’s path to academic achievement,” The Federalist noted.
SEL became more prominent during the Obama administration, when the government sought to collect data assembled from teachers’ subjective observations of a child’s “character strengths.”
Ultimately, the DOE went with 78 of the proposed math books and added, “Despite rejecting 41 percent of materials submitted, every core mathematics course and grade is covered with at least one textbook.”
In the DOE press release, DeSantis added, “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.”
“I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.”
For his part, Corcoran said, “We’re going to ensure that Florida has the highest-quality instructional materials aligned to our nationally-recognized standards.”
“Florida has become a national leader in education under the vision and leadership of Governor DeSantis,” he added.
“When it comes to education, other states continue to follow Florida’s lead as we continue to reinforce parents’ rights by focusing on providing their children with a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms.”
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Thank God! So much damage has been done nationally preparing a population for Orwellian control. Evil people never sleep and neither should good people.