DeSantis’ bad math continues to cost Floridians
Here is a question that you won’t find in Florida’s math textbooks:
What are the chances that Gov. Ron DeSantis, on any given day, will break something in this state that doesn’t need fixing and leave the cleanup to someone else?
Answer: 100%.
For the power-mad DeSantis, last week was a great week. Spineless Republican leaders in Tallahassee genuflected before the governor to approve unconstitutional congressional maps and revenge against Disney World for expressing its opinion in a supposedly “free” state.
But DeSantis’ great week actually began a few days prior to that, when the Department of Education — under DeSantis henchman Richard Corcoran — notified school districts that the department had rejected 54 of 132 math textbooks.
The department usually rejects a few textbooks each year. But what caused this purge?
According to DeSantis, those sneaky publishers tried to slip critical race theory — known as CRT — into discussions of fractions along with other forbidden concepts including something called social emotional learning (another target of the far right) as well as math instruction techniques that were once part of the state’s Common Core curriculum . Perhaps they wanted to sow division when children should have been learning division.
The governor provided no examples of this presumed indoctrination. DeSantis said he could not do so because the textbook material is “proprietary,” meaning that it’s a copyrighted trade secret.
As a legal argument, that’s absurd. But this is the same former military prosecutor who claimed that the Minnesota attorney general’s office had “bungled” the Derek Chauvin case. DeSantis’ comment came shortly before the jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts.
Lt. Gov. Janet Nuñez dutifully propagated the administration’s textbook lie on Fox News. “What we’ve seen,” Nuñez claimed, “is a systematic attempt by these publishers to infiltrate our children’s education by embedding topics such as CRT.”
The fawning hosts didn’t ask for examples of this “embedding.” Nuñez called the department’s review process “very transparent.” Then why wouldn’t she and the governor explain it?
Early this week, the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board asked the Department of Education to explain the purge. This is the non-answer we got:
“Thank you for your diligence in learning more about Florida’s instructional materials adoption process. The Department has a responsibility to ensure textbooks are aligned with the newly adopted Florida B.E.S.T. standards and do not include unsolicited strategies.”
On Thursday, the department website finally released what it called problematic examples. One was a word problem that asks students to calculate a level of racial prejudice.
As a New York Times review showed, however, most of the issues related to the concept of social-emotional learning. Educators like it. But the right-wing group Moms for Liberty, which has more chapters in Florida than any other state and has supported the Republican attack on public education, opposes it.
The purge leaves school districts with just one math publisher. Not that DeSantis and Corcoran care, but most large school districts now are scrambling. Some had purchased the now-banned textbooks because the state hadn’t flagged any problems with them. Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties all face uncertainty and are getting no guidance from Tallahassee. Most had rejected STEMscopes, the sole remaining option for elementary school students, because it was almost all online, and young students do better with printed materials.
Debbi Hixon is on the Broward County School Board. “Why,” Hixon asked, “are they now going through the list again and not approving them? This seems counterproductive that they would go back and say, ‘Just kidding.’ ”
Hixon’s question answers itself. DeSantis’ lust for a re-election victory that positions him as the 2024 GOP presidential front-runner is as transparent as his administration’s review of textbooks is not. Every action the governor takes is designed to promote his brand, no matter how much harm it does to Florida.
That current brand is DeSantis as culture warrior against all the perceived enemies of aggrieved, right-wing Republicans. The collateral damage to Florida is mounting, not that the governor cares.
None of it will stop. Imagine next year, when social studies textbooks come up for review. Will the state allow them to teach that the Constitution once classified Black people as three-fifths of a person? Or is that “woke” math and social studies?
We will leave you with one last question: If Florida is a train going east at 100 miles per hour, and DeSantis’ political ambition is a train going west at 1,000 miles per hour, how long until they collide?
Answer: It’s already happened.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick and El Sentinel Editor Jennifer Marcial Ocasio. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Email us at insight@orlandosentinel.com.