(CNN) — The Florida Department of Education announced Friday the state has rejected more than 50 math textbooks from next school year’s curriculum, citing references to critical race theory among reasons for the rejections.
In a news release, the department stated 54 out of 132 of the textbook submissions would not be added to the state’s adopted list because they did not adhere to Florida’s new standards or contained prohibited topics.
The release said the list of rejected books makes up approximately 41% of submissions, which is the most in Florida’s history.
Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to critical race theory, “inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the release states.
CNN has requested the list of book submissions, the titles that were rejected and the reasons for those rejections.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Monday there were different reasons for the books being rejected and officials aimed to “focus the education on the actual strong academic performance of the students.”
“We don’t want things like math to have, you know, some of these other concepts introduced. It’s not been proven to be effective, and quite frankly, it takes our eye off the ball,” the governor told reporters at a news conference.
DeSantis said state officials “got rid” Common Core, a standardized teaching method rolled out in 2010. The method requires children to group numbers to solve arithmetic problems, rather than the vertical “carry the one” method familiar to most adults. The approach goes beyond simple computation to emphasize deeper mathematical concepts.
Critical race theory, which education officials said some of the math books referenced, has become politicized in recent years. Opponents argue the area of study is based on Marxism and is a threat to the American way of life. But scholars who study it say it explores the ways in which a history of inequality and racism in the United States has continued to impact American society today.
“Critical race theory is a practice. It’s an approach to grappling with a history of White supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” said Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and a law professor who teaches at UCLA and Columbia University.
Educators in multiple states have argued critical race theory is generally not included in grade school teaching.
At least a dozen laws aimed at restricting how topics like racism, sexism, and American history are being taught in American schools have passed in several states and more than 100 bills have been proposed since last year, according to the free expression group PEN America.
In Florida, lawmakers banned the teaching of critical race theory in schools in June 2021. At the time, DeSantis said allowing critical race theory in schools would teach children that “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”
The law states instruction in schools must be “factual and objective.” It specifically prohibits “theories that distort historical events” — including “the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.”
Florida also banned teaching material from the 1619 Project, the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning project to reframe American history around the date of August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived on America’s shores.
The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an “alarming” 71% were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics, the release said.
Despite rejecting 41% of materials submitted, every core mathematics course and grade is covered with at least one textbook, the release said.
In a statement, DeSantis said he is grateful for the department’s thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.
“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,” the governor said.
The-CNN-Wire
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