Education Briefs
The Florida Department of Education says NO to 41 percent of math textbooks submitted for use in the 2022-2023 school year, citing numerous violations of its new B.E.S.T. state standards. The textbooks contain Critical Race Theory, Common Core, and other prohibited topics. A press release issued by the department announces that the state is rejecting 54 of the 132 submitted textbooks due to "publishers' attempts to indoctrinate students."
The highest number of rejected texts were for grade levels kindergarten through fifth grade, "where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies." In grades six through eight, 20 percent of the math texts were rejected; in grades nine through twelve, 35 percent were eliminated. Despite these rejections, the department assures parents that "every core mathematics course and grade is covered with at least one textbook." In 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis issued an Executive Order to eliminate Common Core and develop new education standards, including higher quality instructional materials that conform to them. "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. "I'm grateful that Commissioner [Richard] Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law." Other states would do well to follow Florida's example. The Center Square, 4-17-22
The National Education Association (NEA) spent twice as much of its earnings on politics as it did on its members in fiscal year 2020-2021, according to data compiled by the nonprofit Americans for Fair Treatment (AFFT). The analysis shows that the nation's largest teachers union "donated $66 million to political activities and another $117 million" for contributions, gifts, and grants that were essentially political donations.
AFFT provided its findings exclusively to the Washington Examiner, which the news outlet published on April 7. Donations for political activism totaled 18 percent of the NEA’s $374 million budget, while just nine percent was spent on direct assistance to members, who shell out annual fees of $1,000 or more for local, state, and national union memberships. According to the Examiner, the NEA's spending makes the union "look more like a political organization than a membership organization, with two dollars spent on politics for every one dollar spent on representing its members." The largest beneficiary of the NEA's political spending was its own political action committee, the NEA Advocacy Fund, which received $15.7 million during the 2020-2021 school year. Other donations included $6.7 million to the State Engagement Fund, which funnels donations to left-wing political groups and Democrat candidates. A similar organization, the Strategic Victory Fund, received $1.85 million from the union. "Donations to both organizations were counted among the union's 'contributions, gifts, and grants' expenditures rather than as political activities. The union also designated as a contribution a $1 million donation to a political action committee Future Forward USA Action, that backed then-candidate Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign."
The Haverford School District in Delaware is using a transgender-centered book called Jacob's New Dress for its K-3 curriculum. The book tells the story of a boy who loved playing dress-up and wanted to wear dresses to school. When some classmates tell him he can't wear "girls' clothes," he convinces his parents to let him wear what he wants. 
It's billed as "a heartwarming story [that] speaks to the unique challenges faced by children who don't identify with traditional gender roles." The book has apparently been used in Haverford's second- and third-grade classrooms since 2019 "to break down some stereotypes of what it means to be a boy or a girl." RoyalPatriot.com points out that "while critics of Florida's Parental Rights in Education law claim that schools aren't teaching this kind of material to young children and Florida's law is fighting against a "straw man," schools are offering this kind of material to young children." Some parents have objected to the book, arguing that they do not want the schools forcing this indoctrination on their kids and demanding that the district remove it. According to National File, the book is part of the Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) scheme that "employs social ideology on race and gender." At least six states, including Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont "are using Social-Emotional Learning in both preschool and early elementary education while nine other states have adopted it for grades K through 12."
A UCLA accounting professor who was suspended for refusing to issue student grades based on race is vindicated in court. Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, professor Gordon Klein received an email from a group of students describing themselves as "non-black,"
asking that he grade black students with greater "leniency." Newsweek reported at the time that Klein quoted the email in part as follows: "We are writing to express our tremendous concern about the impact that this final exam and project will have on the mental and physical health of our Black classmates." Other excerpts from the email were posted by The Daily Wire, including requests for a "no harm final exam, shortened exams, and extended deadlines for final assignments and projects." Klein found the request to be a violation of the law, and pointed out the obvious in his response: that he would not be able to identify the black students since they were having virtual classes, and that even white students, if they were from Minneapolis, might be equally devastated. He further pointed out that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that people should not be judged on the basis of skin color. A week later, the university placed Klein on leave for his "woefully racist" response. Although UCLA claims he was reinstated in late June 2020, Klein filed suit against the university. On March 30 of this year, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge H. Jay Ford III ruled that there was "sufficient evidence to 'support judgment in his favor'" A jury trial is scheduled for April 2023. The Western Journal, 4-7-22
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