Florida Department of Education Data Shows Attempt to Indoctrinate Students Overwhelmingly Aimed at Youngest
The Florida Department of Education found over 70 percent of math text books submitted for K-5 grade levels did not align with the state’s standards or that they contained prohibited topics.
Think of that; the woke left cannot even keep their crazy ideology out of textbooks on a subject that should be among the least political of all.
The good news is that publishers are driving by the bottom line and some have already announced they will remove offending material rather than lose out on being able to sell books in the nation’s third most populous state.
Florida has over 2.7 million students in public schools.
Last month, Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran adopted a list of “mathematics instructional materials properly aligned to Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking Standards,” the state’s DOE said in a news release.
Overall for grades K-12, the department rejected 41 percent of the textbooks submitted, which was the most in Florida’s history.
This broke down to 54 of the 132 math texts reviewed being found unacceptable.
“Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory, inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning in mathematics,” the DOE said.
“The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies,” the department added.
By way of comparison, the DOE rejected only 20 percent of materials for grades 6-8 and 35 percent for grades 9-12.
Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed appreciation to the Florida DOE for doing such a thorough review of the textbooks.
“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,” he said.
“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,” DeSantis added.
Corcoran said Florida’s focus is making sure schools are focusing on education, not indoctrination.
“We’re going to ensure that Florida has the highest-quality instructional materials aligned to our nationally-recognized standards,” he said.
“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,” Corcoran further stated.
Florida Politics reported over the weekend that the DOE added 17 previously rejected books to the list of approved materials after the publisher removed the “woke content.”
Last month, DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill into law, which critics have derided as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
HB 1557 prohibits classroom instruction regarding “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards” for those in higher grades.
“We have seen curriculum embedded for very, very young children, classroom materials about sexuality and woke gender ideology. We have seen libraries that have clearly inappropriate pornographic materials for very young kids,” the governor said at a bill signing ceremony.
DeSantis provided the example of the GenderBread person in a grade school book.
“It’s trying to say that they can be whatever they want to be. This is inappropriate for kindergartners and first graders and second graders. Parents do not want this going on in their schools,” he said.
Speaking in front of a sign that says, “Protect children/Support parents,” Governor Desantis says this image of the “Genderbread man,” is one of the reasons the state needs the so-called “Don’t say gay bill.” https://t.co/tETUUI7jta pic.twitter.com/DWkTwA05jv
— CBS4 News Gainesville (@mycbs4) March 28, 2022
DeSantis argued that those on the left who opposed the legislation tried to sway public opinion through the use of deceptive narratives, like calling it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
“For example, they support sexualizing kids in kindergarten. They support injecting woke gender ideology into second grade classrooms. They support enabling schools to ‘transition students’ to a ‘different gender’ without the knowledge of the parent, much less without the parents’ consent,” he said.
Thank God some governors like DeSantis are calling out the woke left and taking steps to counter their destructive agenda.
Kids should be able to get an education without being force-fed liberal ideologies.
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