Florida Dept. of Education Emails Reveal Confusion for Textbook Companies, New Examples of Lesson Changes

The wave of far-right measures unleashed by conservative states to drastically reshape U.S. public education, including by restricting discussions or lessons about race and gender, have had profound consequences for students, educators, and parents. According to a new report by the Washington Post, which cites documents uncovered by American Oversight, they have also left textbook publishers struggling with declining sales and a lack of clear guidance on how to apply the new restrictions.

American Oversight has been investigating the development, implementation, and effects of these measures, including by suing the state education department of Florida — home to some of the most controversial new measures of the past year and a half, from book bans to the “Don’t Say Gay” law — for the release of records related to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attacks on public education.

Documents obtained through that litigation and through other public records requests shed light on the frustration publishers experienced in seeking clarification from the Florida Department of Education about requirements for math and social studies textbooks. The records also contain previously unseen examples of how publishers, in the absence of clear guidance, changed lessons in math textbooks to remove references to different cultures. Those alterations — for example, rewriting a lesson that discussed the global history of coffee and tea to instead focus on working at an hospital — provide a glimpse of how far-right restrictions combined with inadequate definitions have resulted in denying students information and context that could enrich their understanding of the world.

Florida Textbook Reviews
Last May, the Florida Department of Education released examples of math textbooks that it rejected for containing content related to critical race theory or social-emotional learning, topics that, while not clearly defined, were the target of measures championed by DeSantis. One rejected textbook included short biographies on notable mathematicians of color and women mathematicians. Another rejected exercise used bar graphs measuring racial prejudice by age and political identification.

In May of this year, the department announced that it had initially rejected 82 out of 101 social studies textbooks for containing objectionable materials; after revisions, the number of rejections dropped to 35. Examples of rejected lessons included an explanation of why someone might want to take a knee during the national anthem, as well as a passage about the Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of George Floyd in a middle school textbook. Florida’s unclear and chilling guidelines caused significant apprehension among publishers, with one company even proposing a story about Rosa Parks that made no mention of race, which the company later said was an overreaction. 

Accelerate Learning’s Communications with Department of Education
Through public records requests, American Oversight has obtained more examples of rejected lessons, as well as documents showing how in 2022 curriculum developer Accelerate Learning removed several math instructional materials and replaced them with lessons that contained no multicultural elements. The changes were made in April 2022 after representatives from Accelerate Learning emailed the Florida Department of Education seeking clarification about why Accelerate materials had been rejected. 

A few days earlier, the department had released a list of approved math textbooks, revealing that it had rejected 54 of 132 books submitted for review. In a public statement, the department said that 28 had been rejected for “incorporat[ing] prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies.”

After receiving the list, an Accelerate executive asked for “more information” about why a fourth grade course wasn’t recommended. After a phone call a few days later, it appears that Accelerate still had questions about what reviewers had flagged as problematic. “Is there a way for us to get examples of what it looks like one reviewer found?” another Accelerate executive asked on April 22. “We worked really hard … to follow the guidance we were given from the DOE every step of the way so it surprises me that someone found that we specifically mentioned culturally relevant teaching.” The executive added, “Specific examples or even just pointing us to where they found it (scope/lesson) would be helpful.” 

They followed up on April 26 after not receiving a reply, writing, “I know you all are swamped, but I also know these are time-sensitive things.” 

An appeal meeting was scheduled for April 28. The day before, the Accelerate executive emailed to say that since they still had not been “given specific examples” or “the exact thing that the reviewers were trained to look for,” the company had conducted its own review of two courses that had been flagged as containing “culturally responsive teaching.” Accelerate identified “three examples that are present in both courses not recommended where we highlight different cultures,” and the executive wrote that they would replace these sections with other content, providing links to the old and revised content. 

The lessons consisted of short passages about various subjects, including some with multicultural elements, that introduce a set of math and reading exercises. The emails suggest that the lessons were altered without the department of education’s explicit instruction but based on Accelerate’s understanding of the agency’s criteria:

• A story that explained the global history of coffee and tea, used to introduce adding and subtracting decimal numbers, was replaced with a passage about working in an animal hospital.
• A passage about Tropical Storm Pakhar, a 2017 storm that impacted southern China, southeast Asia, and the Philippines, was part of a lesson about the place value of whole numbers. It was replaced with a passage about invasive species in the Chesapeake Bay.
• A story about a sand sculpture competition in Bulgaria, used in a lesson about interpreting data, was replaced with a story about competitive organized video games.

Following the April 28 meeting, Accelerate sent a round of updates in a spreadsheet that included the note “Deleted the word ‘cultural’ in all scopes.” The spreadsheet confirmed Accelerate swapped all the above stories (with the video games story being replaced with one called “Billiard Balls”). Both of Accelerate’s courses were added to the department’s approved list on May 3. 

Confusion Among Textbook Publishers
Accelerate wasn’t the only publisher to express confusion over Florida’s review criteria. Emails released within hours of American Oversight suing the Department of Education in March include further examples of textbook companies asking for details about how their materials were being reviewed under the DeSantis administration’s new education policies.

In one email obtained by American Oversight and reported on by the Washington Post, a representative from McGraw Hill asked the department about a requirement for social studies materials that “Primary source documents … be included and unedited.” The McGraw Hill representative asked for clarification on what “unedited” meant and asked whether excerpts or the use of ellipses to shorten a quote would be permitted. She also requested a list of what constitutes a primary source, noting that things like treaties, legislation, and Supreme Court cases could be considered primary sources.

The documents also include a letter from BFW Publishers in which the company raised concerns about its book not having been included on the approved list and disputed reviewers’ conclusions. The company stated that it had learned from news reports that its book had been rejected for including one or more “Special Topics” such as critical race theory, culturally responsive teaching, social justice, or social emotional learning, but that those terms “are for the most part not defined.”

Other Records of Revised Content
The documents obtained by American Oversight contain other examples of lessons that were altered or flagged. A spreadsheet tracking appeals from textbook developers mentioned a Cengage precalculus textbook that had a question “about the spread of a ‘contagious flu virus’” and another question about “the percentage of individuals living below poverty line in 2016,” noting that the latter was “not meaningful to students.”

Another document, which appears to be authored by a content reviewer, included a complaint about a graph representing polling data by decade regarding opinions about laws against interracial marriage, with mention of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision recognizing the right to same-sex marriage. The reviewer wrote that the math problem “goes out of its way” to mention the Obergefell case, “making an analogy that opposing the legalization of same-sex marriage is like the opposition to interracial marriage.”

In another instance, BFW changed a probability and statistics question for grades 9–12 about a white interviewer and a Middle Eastern interviewer receiving different answers to survey questions about drone strikes in Iraq. The revised word problem asked whether the breed of dog walked by the interviewer impacted survey respondents’ answers to the question, “Do you like dogs?”

American Oversight’s Investigations
American Oversight’s lawsuit against the Florida Department of Education, filed in March of this year, seeks the release of additional records that could provide more information about the DeSantis administration’s efforts to stifle vital historical and cultural learning as well as shed light on the potential influence of outside groups and activists. The thousands of pages of records released within hours of the lawsuit’s filing also included communications with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, complaints from far-right activists, and other allegations of “critical race theory” in school curricula.

More information on American Oversight’s investigations into attacks on education is available here.