A total of nine math books banned by the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) for use in public schools because they violated Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) standards were reinstated after their publishers removed sections that according to the FDOE promoted Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Since 2019, the FDOE has reviewed all books submitted by publishers for adoption by the agency for use in classrooms statewide. On April 15. Corcoran approved Florida’s initial adoption list for mathematics instructional materials that meet B.E.S.T. standards.
A total of 71 percent of the rejected books on the mathematics list were intended for use by students in grades K-5.
In an April 28 posting on its website, FDOE said that “publishers are aligning their instructional materials to state standards and removing woke content allowing the department to add 17 more books to the state adoption list over the past 14 days.”
The posting also offers examples of so-called problematic elements in reviewed text books including a written math problem measuring racial bias in a specific situation.
The agency said that it will continue to review publisher-generated changes intended to make textbooks compliant with state standards.
“The Department is continuing to give publishers the opportunity to remediate all deficiencies identified during the review to ensure the broadest selection of high quality instructional materials are available to the school districts and Florida’s students,” the website posting said.
The FDOE statement is online at Instructional Materials (fldoe.org)
https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/instructional-materials/
