Florida releases examples of 'prohibited topics' from rejected math books
Categories: US Education News
The department said it had rejected 54 of the 132 mat. Florida’s Education Department released four examples of portions of math books it rejected last Friday, saying the texts referred to critical race theory, or CRT, and other “prohibited topics.” In a statement released last Friday, the department said it had rejected 54 of the 132 math textbooks it reviewed, or 41 percent.
The department followed up this week by saying it had received a “volume of requests ... for examples of problematic elements of the recently reviewed instructional materials.” In response to those requests, the department published four parts of the rejected books that it deemed problematic.
One math problem shows two graphs. The title of one is “Measuring Racial Prejudice, by Age” and the title of another is “Measuring Racial Prejudice, by Political Identification.” Another math problem from a rejected book presents two algebra equations.
The word problem begins “What? Me? Racist? More than 2 million people have tested their racial prejudice using an online version of the Implicit Association Test.” The problem asks students to solve for S, which represents the score on the Implicit Association Test.
The department said last week that 28 of the books were rejected specifically because they “incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.” Lists of the submitted and accepted books that were made available did not say how the rejected books referred to critical race theory.
Other rejected books did not properly align with B.E.S.T. Standards — Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, Florida’s answer to Common Core — which Gov. Ron DeSantis has worked to eliminate.Another set of rejected books both included “prohibited topics” and did not align with B.E.S.T.
The Education Department said.“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 said last week.