Collier School Board Complies with Rejection of CRT-Laced Math Textbooks
April 26, 2022 Updated 11:33 A.M. ET
NAPLES (FLV) – The Collier County School Board Tuesday did not adopt the proposed math textbooks the Florida Department of Education rejected after the department found material referencing Social Emotional Learning and Critical Race Theory.
Instead, in a special board meeting, the school board followed suit with the DeSantis Administration and decided to wait for those publishers to make changes to the textbooks before adopting them.
“I’m not willing to go off list. We’re going to stick with what the Governor has recommended is in the best interest of our students,” said Collier County School Board Chair Jen Mitchell said Tuesday.
The Florida Department of Education rejected 41% of submitted math textbooks citing Critical Race Theory, inclusions of Common Core, and Social Emotional Learning in math. The state vetted the 132 submitted textbooks and rejected 54 of them.
Collier County had originally planned to adopt seven proposed math textbooks on the state’s proposed list for grades K-5 and Secondary Math until the Department of Education rejected them.
The textbooks in question are from the publishers Savvas and McGraw Hill.
“They’re actually making changes to come into compliance with the governor’s wishes,” Mitchell said.
The board is in a holding pattern until they learn of the changes being made to the textbooks.
The Florida Department of Education released examples of Critical Race Theory in some of the rejected textbooks, but did not refer to specific publishers.
Examples include bar graphs teaching students to measure racial prejudice by age. Another graph has students measure racial prejudice by political identification. It displays charts telling students that those with conservative beliefs are more prejudiced.
These examples teach students about the Implicit Association Test. It is a test used to prescribe ‘implicit associations’ regarding race and gender.
In June of 2021, the Collier County School Board approved textbooks from a Pro-Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter publisher.
The vote faced vehement outrage from parents concerned with pro-Critical Race Theory (CRT) and pro-Black Lives Matter (BLM) statements from the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH).
The CCSB argued that the textbooks do not explicitly contain CRT and that they do not support CRT.
In July of 2020, the superintendent of Collier Schools, Kamela Patton, sent an email supporting Black Lives Matter and denouncing systemic racism.
