Florida’s Education Department launched 4 examples of parts of math books it rejected final Friday, saying the texts referred to crucial race concept, or CRT, and different “prohibited topics.”
In an announcement launched final Friday, the division mentioned it had rejected 54 of the 132 math textbooks it reviewed, or 41 %.
The division adopted up this week by saying it had obtained a “volume of requests … for examples of problematic elements of the recently reviewed instructional materials.”
In response to these requests, the division printed 4 components of the rejected books that it deemed problematic.
One math drawback reveals two graphs. The title of one is “Measuring Racial Prejudice, by Age” and the title of one other is “Measuring Racial Prejudice, by Political Identification.”
Another math drawback from a rejected guide presents two algebra equations. The phrase drawback begins “What? Me? Racist? More than 2 million people have tested their racial prejudice using an online version of the Implicit Association Test.” The drawback asks college students to resolve for S, which represents the rating on the Implicit Association Test.
Another rejected guide portion lists a lesson goal as: “Students build proficiency with social awareness as they practice with empathizing with classmates.” Another rejected portion mentions specializing in “students’ social and emotional learning.”
The division mentioned final week that 28 of the books have been rejected particularly as a result of they “incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.” Lists of the submitted and accepted books that have been made accessible didn’t say how the rejected books referred to crucial race concept.
Other rejected books didn’t correctly align with B.E.S.T. Standards — Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, Florida’s reply to Common Core — which Gov. Ron DeSantis has labored to remove.
Another set of rejected books each included “prohibited topics” and didn’t align with B.E.S.T., the Education Department mentioned.
“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,” DeSantis mentioned final week.
DeSantis and Republican legislators have fought to ban crucial race concept, the tutorial research of institutional racism, in public faculties. Critical race concept is usually studied solely in schools and universities.
DeSantis on Friday signed the Stop W.O.Ok.E. Act (Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act) — to restrict how race is mentioned in lecture rooms and workplaces.
He mentioned the aim of the regulation is to cease the “indoctrination” of kids. “What we will not do is let people distort history to try to serve their current ideological goals,” he mentioned.
DeSantis additionally signed a invoice final month that enables mother and father to resolve which books may very well be banned from college libraries and one other that limits educating about sexual orientation and gender identification in kindergarten by way of third grade lecture rooms.
NBC News reached out to 2 publishers that had greater than half a dozen math books on the rejected checklist.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt HMH didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A consultant for McGraw Hill LLC mentioned: “We’re reviewing the matter and are seeking detailed feedback from the Florida Department of Education process administrators.”