ORLANDO, Fla. — The Florida Department of Education on Friday disputed an Orlando Sentinel/South Florida Sun Sentinel story about what math textbook reviewers found in the books, but the newspapers stand by their work.
The article, published Thursday, found that only one reviewer complained about “critical race theory,” according to a review of thousands of pages of evaluation documents. That reviewer evaluated two high school math books. The state had about 70 reviewers evaluating 132 math books.
After the reviews were done, the department rejected 54 of the textbooks, claiming many contained “critical race theory” — a topic Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP leaders have railed against — or other objectionable material meant to “indoctrinate” students.
But the newspapers’ story showed that only the one reviewer, a member of the conservative Moms for Liberty group, complained about critical race theory, often called CRT, in the math books.
“We take our responsibility for accuracy seriously, and immediately after the state complained that our story was false Sentinel and Sun Sentinel reporters reviewed all of the records again,” said Julie Anderson, editor of both newspapers. “We came up with the same results: only one reviewer complained that CRT was present in math textbooks they reviewed.”
Cassie Palelis, the department’s press secretary, said Friday that the department looked at the reviewers’ scores, and not just their written comments. She said it assumed that any score below a 5, the highest rating, meant the reviewer found evidence of a prohibited topic — even if the reviewer explicitly noted in the comment field that no such material was found.
Reviewers were asked to score the textbooks on many topics, including four prohibited ones: “critical race theory,” “social emotional learning,” “culturally responsive teaching as it relates to CRT,” or “social justice as it relates to CRT.”
Many reviewers gave 5s when asked if the books avoided those topics as required, noting there was no evidence of CRT or other content Florida found objectionable. Others gave 4s, meaning “good alignment” with state rules, but they also indicated in their comments that the texts had no objectionable material.
Among the comments from reviewers who gave the books 4s on the question that asked if the materials align with state rules prohibiting CRT:
“There was no CRT evident.”
“Materials appear to not have any Critical Race Theory in them.”
“No CRT noted.”
“Materials do not contain any of this.”
“Critical race not discussed.”
“No presentation of CRT in materials.”
Even a reviewer who scored a book a 3, for “fair alignment,” for the critical race category wrote, “Nothing noticed.”
But another reviewer who gave a 3 on that question about a statistics book noted that some examples used in the text, such as “racial profiling in policing,” might violate “prohibitions about racism being embedded in society.” The reviewer did not mention CRT.
That reviewer, Jordan Adams, is a civic education specialist at Hillsdale College in Michigan, according to ABC Action News in Tampa, which Friday published an investigation of who reviewed the state’s math books, noting some were not math experts.
Hillsdale College is a conservative school whose professors have advised the DeSantis administration on civics education and hosted former Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran as a speaker last year. Corcoran said then he wanted to “keep all of the crazy liberal stuff out” of Florida’s classrooms.
The newspapers did not find Adams’ comments in their search of the documents Thursday and thus did not include that example in their story.
The papers published online Friday the thousands of pages of review documents used to write that story.
Palelis said anything less than a perfect 5 suggested “CRT components were found” and prompted further evaluation by the department. She said that was the case, even if reviewers’ comments specifically said there was no such content.
“A score of 4 would indicate that prohibited content was included within the instructional materials,” she wrote. “These scores would then trigger us to work with the publishers to update materials to remove any such content.”
She called the newspapers’ story “false,” as did Manny Diaz, the state’s new education commissioner, on Twitter.
Anderson disputed that accusation.
“We stand by our reporting and call upon the state Department of Education to open up its review process so that the public can judge for themselves the qualifications of the reviewers, the scoring methodology and the reasons why textbooks are banned or approved as well as what changes they are demanding of textbook publishers,” she said.
Since its April 15 announcement about textbook rejections, the department said 19 of the initially rejected books have been approved, either because they better aligned them to state standards or deleted “woke content.”
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