As y’all have probably heard, the edu-grift douchebag who runs the Florida Department of Education, former GOP speaker of the Florida House and failed FSU presidential candidate Richard Corcoran, put out a deranged statement Friday announcing that the state was rejecting dozens of math textbooks publishers submitted for review because reasons. Here’s an excerpt of the statement, which can be read in full here:
Florida Rejects Publishers’ Attempts to Indoctrinate Students
Tallahassee, Fla., April 15, 2022 – Today, Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran approved Florida’s initial adoption list for mathematics instructional materials properly aligned to Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) [Jaysus, that’s the best they could do? — ed.] Standards. The approved list followed a thorough review of submissions at the Department, which found 41 percent of the submitted textbooks were impermissible with either Florida’s new standards or contained prohibited topics – the most in Florida’s history. Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics. The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies. Despite rejecting 41 percent of materials submitted, every core mathematics course and grade is covered with at least one textbook.
We’re talking MATH books here, and this latest dumb reactionary stunt has further cemented Florida’s already solid reputation as a national laughingstock, with many folks pointing out that the DeSantis school wrecking crew probably objects to the equal sign or numerals’ Arabic origins. The governor’s troll appointees/donors/fluffers haven’t tackled social studies textbook reviews yet, but that’s coming up and guaranteed to be a shitshow.
Reporters from Florida dailies have asked for examples of objectionable content in the rejected math books and have been stonewalled so far:
Asked for examples, the department sent links to lists of reviewed and approved books, and issued this response: “We were very clear in the specifications what expectations needed to be met for materials to be added to the state adopted list. Bids that met those specifications were included. Bids that did not meet those specifications were not included.”
We have asked again.
Spokespeople for the education department and Gov. Ron DeSantis did not respond to requests for specific examples that prompted the decision.
As Steve M. pointed out on Twitter, enterprising reporters may be able to compare Florida’s rejection rate with those of other red states for a rough idea of how much this is driven by DeSantis’s desire for Fox News facetime. Maybe education reporters can get down in the weeds and interview publishers of rejected books. Since state officials refuse to provide examples of content that violated the criteria, reporters should definitely GUESS what landed books on the banned list.
Will anyone but the DeSantis Fan Club on Fox News lap this textbook bullshit up? I have no idea.
Meanwhile, Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor of Florida who hopes to run for his old job a second time as a Democrat (he lost to Rick Scott in 2014), picked up a high-profile endorsement (TB Times):
As the Democratic primary for Florida governor heats up, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist announced an endorsement Monday from one of the most notable, and controversial, names in national politics — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“From his tireless work in Congress to his commitment to Floridians across the state, Charlie Crist has an impenetrable record of fighting for the people of the Sunshine State and delivering results that matter,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Huh. The logic of this endorsement escapes me because one thing the Crist people tout is that he’s a moderate who can appeal to moderate Republicans who may be turned off by DeSantis’s hard-right heel turn. If such voters exist, they probably aren’t huge Pelosi fans.
Does Pelosi usually weigh in on gubernatorial primaries? I can’t recall her doing so in the past, but maybe I just missed it. Also, “impenetrable” certainly is an interesting word choice!
Anyhoo, the Dem gubernatorial primary takes place in August, and the winner will go up against an authoritarian gobshite whom we desperately need to contain at the state level before he’s loosed upon the nation. I’m not sure Crist is the right man since he lost to Rick fucking Scott, but whatever. If it’s Crist, I’d swim through alligator-infested cesspools to vote FOR him and AGAINST DeSantis, were that required. Same with the other candidates, including any cesspool-dwelling alligators on the ballot.
Open thread!
Baud
Interesting. I wonder if it’s because CC is an alum.
Roger Moore
I am deeply suspicious that the real reason the textbooks were rejected was because they didn’t pay off the right people. This is a shakedown in plain sight.
Pennsylvanian
Charlie Crist again? Really?
Can’t the dems round up somebody new down there?
Baud
@Pennsylvanian:
There are other people in the primary.
SiubhanDuinne
Do you suppose she meant to say/write “impeccable”?
Pennsylvanian
@Roger Moore: That was my first thought too. It’s all about the grift.
TheTruffle
I’ll bite. Why is Pelosi “controversial”?
jnfr
@TheTruffle:
Because Republicans hate her?
Dangerman
How quickly can they get a fake math book with a story problem that reads something like “Julie and her wife had 7 apples, but the crackhead wife gave 3 apples away…”?
Speaking of not making sense, I’ve watched “Knives Out” several times now; fine film and it’s actually more fun to watch the 2nd and 3rd times through it.
Spoilers in the next paragraph.
Great writing but damn if I can figure out how a copy of Marta’s bag tag found it’s way to the ransom note. Fran didn’t have the bag. Or did she? Driving me crazy (crazier?).
Kay
I don’t care if they’re “worried now”- I suspect they’ll never admit it if they are- the better question for me is should people continue to listen to them on free speech and who gets heard?
Are they smart on that subject? Thought it through, did good careful work, etc? Or did they just incite a panic that is now fully weaponized against ordinary people like public school teachers and librarians and students, where they all then ran away?
Betty Cracker
@TheTruffle: Among moderate Republicans? Because she’s a Democrat who’s been attacked by wingnuts as a San Francisco (wink-wink) liberal for 30 years.
@Roger Moore: Pretty much everyone who has observed the rise of the GOP edu-grift empire in Florida suspects that too. They are notoriously crooked. Another reason to keep demanding to see the alleged criteria violations…
Geeno
Hey, did you know most of the basic arithmetic operations are TRANSitive!!!
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
I was thinking “impregnable,” if the author was going for security against attack.
Kay
Betty’s lucky because Florida has real newspapers. I feel like they don’t get enough credit. They’re constantly digging into DeSantis and it’s such productive digging because 9 times out of 10 he’s lying. It’s great. Good job.
cope
I’m just going to take a wild guess that acceptable textbooks and resources are owned by Pearson.
Geminid
Speaker Pelosi may be endorsing Crist out of loyalty to a member of her caucus. Polls show Crist with a lead over his two main opponents, and doing marginally better in matchups against DeSantis. But Crist has better name recognition right now, and I doubt that Pelosi pays much attention to Florida’s state politics anyway.
I wonder if Trump will try to throw a spoke into DeSantis’ campaign wheel. He’s petty enough, and has no loyalty to anyone besides himself.
Kay
It’s all I want. Maybe other newspapers could follow this model?
Andrew
I’ve always called him Charlie F**king Crist, even after he turned Democrat. Look up “opportunist” in the dictionary and you’ll see his preternaturally handsome mug. He first made his political bones as a law-and-order Republican (“Chain Gang Charlie”), then went squishy on R’s when they started becoming unpopular, and eventually switched teams. I trust Charlie about as far as I can throw him, but even still he’s a far better choice than DeSantis. I’m hoping Nikki Fried, the State Ag Commissioner, wins the nomination, but I’ll get out and canvass for Charlie Fucking Crist if that’s what it’s going to take to win.
Paul in KY
@cope: Probably the people who put out Goofus and Gallant.
TheTruffle
@Kay: Please. Maybe instead of carrying water for these wannabe brownshirts, journalists should ask and keep asking and make the brownshirts’ lives as inconvenient as possible.
banditqueen
The College Board’s AP Program will remove AP certification from any courses that don’t meet their clearly established criteria for required content. Did the gqp even consider this when they started the “CRT” bullshit? They don’t care of course, so they’ll respond to this by cramming their minions onto the College Board.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Did you see that clip of Roger Stone telling Trump to “watch out” for DeSantis? It supposedly happened this weekend at Trump’s club for rich douchebags in South Florida. Man, I am really hoping for an all-out, mutually destructive war between those two authoritarian pricks!
@Andrew: Same! Fried is not without some baggage of her own, but I’ve found myself rooting for her because she’s been a bare-knuckled heckler of DeSantis, and maybe that’s what it will take to break through (along with the pro-pot agenda — I think Florida is ready for that). Worth a shot, anyway!
scav
I’m not entirely sure the Bible could pass the FL GQP purity test. Doesn’t it present slavery as a bad thing — a suffering thing even! — for the jews and doesn’t that malign the glorious culture?
(Better check wirh Rees-Mogg.)
Kay
@TheTruffle:
They do it a lot. As far as I’m concerned Florida newspapers are almost solely responsible for catching Epstein. God knows law enforcement wasn’t interested. They did the investigation law enforcement refused to do. They all should have been earning detective wages on top of their newspaper wages.
wetzel
The thing about Methodism is that you keep your eyes open. You are not being dunked. You don’t close your eyes when you are baptized in Methodism. Methodists used to argue with Baptists. There are old arguments. That is what you have in rural Florida, Methodists and Baptists.
Sometimes the seminary will send a minister from New England down South. They will try to talk about how there is an understanding of basic human dignity as a general revelation in Methodism, but a Southern Methodist will feel their folkways threatened. Unitarianism found its voice from within Methodism back in the 19th century. Maybe this is an over-simplification. It’s something I remember a Unitarian minister saying. Unitarianism came out of Methodism with the transcendalists and so you can find common ideas with secular humanism in Methodism, a germ of it.
Within Methodism it is a sin of pride in judgment to impose your religious views on other people, for one thing. It is not Christ-like to use public compliance rituals like you are the rooster of God. You don’t make public idols or patriotic spectacles. It’s not Christian. You can see the tree as a church or a tree.
It used to be that protestant religions had seminaries and coherent theologies. Protestantism could coexist with modernity. I’m a wandering Methodist. I do not understand why the Methodist seminary is not more vocal in Florida. Where are the Methodists to permit the Baptists to take over the state with their bullying way of thinking they’re always right? Asking for a friend.
Jackie
O/T, but too late to respond to @Immanentize last thread. I’m SO happy and relieved the Immp appears to have turned the corner and he’s been released from the hospital!!! May you both use this week to get caught up on sleep – and, in Immp’s case – continue to heal and gain strength so you can head back home Friday. Being home and with the kitty will help both of you continue recovering!???
Geminid
@Geminid: Now I see that Pelosi endorsed another Congressman, Joe Kennedy, in his 2020 primary challenge to Senator Markey. It did not seem to do Kennedy much good.
Roger Moore
@banditqueen:
It won’t matter. The universities are under no obligation to accept AP credit in the first place. My alma mater didn’t accept AP credit, or even transfer credit from schools it didn’t think were rigorous enough. If the College Board waters down the course requirements the universities will just stop accepting credit in those classes.
Betty
@Geminid: I saw a story this morning that Roger Stone has attacked DeSantis for having the audacity to appear to be challenging the boss man.
Oops. I see Betty Cracker already covered this.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@banditqueen: I would rather imagine that when the colleges start rejecting students because they can’t meet the basic math requirements the Culture Warriors will simply do as Authoritarians do and blame the teachers for teaching what they were ordered to do.
School Board “Not one student from your high school advanced math class could meet the state college admissions standards, what is your explanation Mrs Frunapple?”
Mrs Frunapple “This board demanded I teach them 2+2=5, never mention Primary Numbers because that was a grooming and I was threaten with arrest under the Patriot Act if I used the word Algebra in class.”
School Board “Yes, we understand that. But why did you listen to us?”
dlwchico
I don’t understand how they can refuse to give examples. This is a public matter, paid for by tax dollars. How can there be so little transparency?
MisterForkbeard
The thing is, the statement is super weaselly. It’s that books were banned because they “incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT”.
The list of banned topics is HUGE. It includes references to or using information from Common Core. It includes mention of gay people, “two mommies” or similar things for younger kids. This whole statement is designed to make it sound like the books are banned because ‘CRT’ is rampant, but in actuality most will be banned because they have extremely anodyne references to something DeSantis doesn’t like.
The whole thing is about damaging kids, teachers, education and liberals for Republican political gain. Same as it always was.
Anonymous At Work
Textbooks have to be written to two sets of standards: Texas and California. Any other state, yes that includes you in New York, are bush league. This could set up a bad show-down between California and GQP over standards. One hopes that the Democrats hold the White House when it comes to a head or else we’ll have “Regency Press” “‘”‘”history”‘”‘” textbooks (there are not enough quotation marks in the world for how non-existent the connection between Regency’s publication and facts.)
Roger Moore
@scav:
The Biblical attitude toward slavery is mixed. The Old Testament, which spends a lot more time talking about slavery, presents slavery as something that was just presumed to exist. It was clearly seen as something that was oppressive, so there were limits on slavery, e.g. Hebrew slaves were supposed to be more like indentured servants who were freed every 7 years. OTOH, it was anticipated that some slaves wouldn’t want to be freed(!) and there was a procedure for slaves who wanted to stay that way.
bbleh
@Roger Moore: That was certainly my first thought, and by far the most likely reason.
Only other possibility I can come up with is, their “commission” is a bunch of genuinely brain-damaged yahoos, several probably with severe cases of Jesus, and they were triggered by … who knows what? The font. The indentation of paragraphs ([squints twitchily] “Don’t you see?! The outline of the indented paragraphs forms the profile of Satan! It’s right there!!“). Some particular word that some lunatic preacher has identified as demonically Woke. Or maybe it’s just that math is hard, and they don’t understand it, and that simply must be an Elitist Librul plot.
But it doesn’t matter. This is purely performative, just like Abbott’s idiot “inspection” thing. (“Huh-huh-huh. They censored math textbooks! Huh-huh! Huh.”) They don’t care about kids, parents, education, or the long-term effects on the economic or social well-being of the state. It’s WWE politics. And their gomer followers will eat it up.
Betty Cracker
@dlwchico: That’s the right question.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: Also a woman!
Betty
@Andrew: Re-runs at this point are scary based on the McAuliffe results in Virginia. The fact that Christ lost to Scott is not a confidence builder. Not sure how Florida would respond to a female candidate. Sexism is far from dead. You have to hope DeSantis has gone too far in trying to out-Trump Trump.
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Nah. They’ll do as culture warriors do and force the state university system to accept credit from the state’s public schools. They’re already taking over the state university systems in other ways, so this wouldn’t even be a question.
JaneE
I think it was CNN that quoted DeSantis as saying something like textbook shouldn’t teach kids to hate each other. Unless kids have changed as much as math teaching since I was in school, what they might learn to hate is math. I wish they had Common Core when I was in school, because it looked a lot more interesting than the memorization we did. I can’t imagine what really elementary math texts could do, other than give the wrong answers to problems. Maybe the text used illustrations and the kid taking apples away was the wrong color.
FelonyGovt
I bet the banned textbooks have math problems with pictures of Black kids or something similar. I wish I were kidding.
Kent
The College Board is not a “board” despite the name. It is a non-profit run out of NYC that mostly answers to colleges and universities rather than politicians and K-12 schools.
The way to really get Florida’s attention is if a bunch of private and out-of-state colleges announced that they were not going to accept credits from Florida high schools and that students from Florida would have to take remedial classes to fill in what they were missing. THAT will get the attention of these suburban middle class bible thumpers.
Cameron
@Kay: That’s something that’s struck me since I moved down here – whatever problems the state Democratic Party has with communications are not shared by the newspapers.
Brachiator
The weird sad thing in Florida is that the state legislature, presumably Republican dominated, seems willing to give DeSantis everything he wants.
Don’t know how voters feel about him.
He seems to know his Authoritarian Populist Handbook very well to appeal to a certain base.
bbleh
@Roger Moore: And eventually the entire Florida educational system, including its state universities, will become as much of a laughingstock as the rest of the state. They’ll lose accreditation, their diplomas will be routinely ignored by employers (except the in-state ones that can be knuckled by the government), and the whole situation will spiral downward, and it will take a VERY long time to repair (if that’s even possible). But the people responsible for it will be long gone.
That’s what happens when politics becomes WWE. You basically get nihilism: blow it up because the gomers get a thrill. (And make sure the right people profit.)
Mike in NC
Floridians rewarded their shitty governor by electing him to the US Senate. Well played, Sunshine State! Rick Scott’s “to do” list included going back to building Trump’s stupid wall, raising taxes on half the population, and slashing Social Security and Medicare.
scav
@Roger Moore: Doesn’t matter really. I’m sure there were exercises in the math textbooks that weren’t pushing equality but dealing with inequalities or fractions. Nevertheless, It’s all bathwater! If anything in it makes a wannabe plantation squire question his divine right in the slightest or squirm in his throne Let It All Be Tossed!
Roger Moore
@Anonymous At Work:
I have long thought that California should just bypass the textbook publishers completely. We should have Cal State professors write textbooks that meet our state standards as part of their employment, so the books will be a work for hire and the copyright will reside with the State of California. Then we can publish our own textbooks without having to pay exorbitant prices for copyright. I would bet that we could print the textbooks cheap enough- or provide them as ebooks- that we could just give all the students copies of their textbooks every year and not have to worry about collecting the books at the end of the year. Even better, we could sell the books to other states at a nominal markup so they could do the same thing.
bbleh
@Kent: Or it’ll be just another Librul Elitist Plot, and they’ll send their kids to for-profit christianist universities. And thus shall the children suffer for the sins of their fathers. Very tidy, when you think about it.
Fleeting Expletive
Didn’t Texas use to be the final arbiter of school textbooks? I was briefly exposed to that bunch of pecksniff busybodies in the seventies. Their committees, because the school population is so huge was largely the boss of which textbooks could be approved. Now Florida gotta play.
Kent
No, it’s the opposite. I teach AP classes and our curriculum, syllabus, and materials need to be approved by the College Board. You have to send it in every year. If they are not approved then we can’t use the AP designation on the course as that is (I think) trademarked.
So Florida if this pans out, high schools can still offer the classes, they just don’t get to put AP on the transcript, which will enrage bazillions of high-achieving kids and parents who are trying to get into highly competitive colleges. We are probably only taking about US history and possibly American lit classes, not all AP classes.
The actual AP tests are different. Anyone can sign up and take those if you pay the money. You don’t actually have to be in the class.
bbleh
@dlwchico: @Betty Cracker: Their reason is “we can, so fuck off.” And their followers love that kind of dickishness.
bbleh
@Kent: Yabbut those “high achieving kids” are probably Librul Elitists, and who says they get to decide what my kids learn?!?
They want Librul Elitist courses, they can move to some librul elitist place with their gay commie teachers. See how they like it when their kid gets groomed!
ETA: wouldn’t be surprised if it affects AP math and maybe science as well. How they gonna get to calculus if their fkin math textbooks are being dumbed down by a bunch of brain-damaged yahoos?
James E Powell
@dlwchico:
According to the standards & practices of the American political media and not withstanding any laws to the contrary, Republicans are not required to be transparent. Or honest. Or sane.
Roger Moore
@Fleeting Expletive:
As @Anonymous At Work says, Texas and California are both very important in the textbook business. They are huge and they both have centralized systems for approving textbooks. For a long time, the other big states didn’t have the same kind of centralized system, so they didn’t have the same kind of leverage, and most other systems were stuck buying whatever flew with either California or Texas. If another large state like Florida is trying to throw its weight around, it’s possible they could force the textbook publishers to go along. Or it’s possible that what’s really happening is that Florida has decided to accept the Texas versions rather than the California versions, and they’re presenting it as fighting against CRT because that’s what’s politically opportune right now.
Kent
Those days are fading away because fewer and fewer schools are actually buying paper textbooks anymore. It is all going digital and digital content can’t be managed the same way as paper textbooks that are “adopted” for 10-year cycles. Digital content is constantly changing. I teach HS and the typical HS textbook for any subject costs about $150/each so a typical student with 5 core classes is carrying around $750 dollars of textbooks in his/her backpack. Compared to just one Chromebook which costs $150. You do the math. Schools do acquire digital content, especially online curriculum for online schools. But there is so much free material out there that most teachers just pick and choose what they want to use rather than following one specific paid curriculum package.
trollhattan
Isn’t Charlie Crist by now Florida’s answer to “who’s our Harold Stassen?”
Alison Rose ???
BE BEST.
God, fuck these people.
JaneE
@Roger Moore: Among the Hebrews and many other cultures of the time, slaves were more likely debt slaves, who sold themselves or some family member to their creditor. Foreign slaves might well be taken in war, and they were the ones closer in what we think of real slavery. If the slave had a skill, they still used it but the income went to the owner. They might live a separate functionally independent life, even though they were a slave. They might even get to keep some of their income, at the discretion of the owner, and buy their own freedom, Hebrews essentially paying off their original debt with their slave labor providing the late fee. Foreign slaves just paid market price.
Jubilees for debt forgiveness were fairly common in the middle east in those times (3,000-1,000 BCE depending) and they often included the freeing of debt slaves.
JaneE
Comment was duplicate
Old School
@MisterForkbeard:
Agreed. It is super weaselly. However, they did say those topics included CRT, so it seems like they’ll be forced to show even one textbook that they feel meets that designation. (Unless the press is distracted by the next shiny object, of course.)
raven
@Kent: We had a project where we gave 4 or 5 SME’s a course buyout and had them write a digital textbook that we then distributed for no cost
Here ya go
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I missed the Stone clip. Trump’s a receptive audience for that. He thinks he made DeSantis governor by endorsing him in the 2018 (same with Brian Kemp in Georgia). Trump suspects that DeSantis wants to bite the hand that fed him.
Trump has nobody’s back but his own, but he’s a narcissist so naturally he thinks others should show loyalty to him. I think that Trump also understands that Republican elites are over him, and that DeSantis is their preferred candidate for 2024..
I read one article about Trump’s jealousy of DeSantis where Trump was said to warn that DeSantis had better watch out, because Charlie Crist is “a killer.” For some reason this struck me as a funny way to describe Charlie Crist. For a while I was going around singing Queen’s “He’s a Kiiller,” but like it was one of those old 45’s being played at 33 1/3 rpm.
piratedan
just once, wouldn’t it be nice for someone in the National Media to stand up and say to these asshats, “show your work!”
Andrew
@Betty: My relative confidence in Nikki Fried is going by the fact that we came so close with a capital-D Democrat of color in 2018. Granted, that was a backlash election against 45, but still, if DeSantis hadn’t buried Andrew Gillum in attack ads the last week, he might have won. The big leap to elect a woman is more prevalent on the R side, I believe, who won’t be voting for her anyway.
oatler
“If This Goes On…”
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-nationalist-tony-spell-says-prophets-should-reign-over-government-and-the-people/
Betty Cracker
My alma mater, the University of Florida, was embroiled in a huge academic freedom scandal a while back because the DeSantis mega-donors who run the Board of Trustees forbade faculty from testifying as experts in litigation challenging the state’s ballot access restrictions and mask/vaccine mandate prohibitions. The schools accrediting body, Southern Association of Colleges, said they were reviewing the allegations. So, DeSantis’s Republican lackeys in the statehouse passed a bill requiring the state’s schools to switch accrediting bodies and included a provision that the schools could sue accreditors who take a “retaliatory action” like an investigation of a scandal.
This is stupid on so many levels. From what I’ve read, it would be a gigantic logistical nightmare to switch accrediting agencies, and any other respectable agency would also investigate an academic freedom controversy of that magnitude. Also, agencies might be reluctant to work with schools that threatened to sue. If this one-party rule in the state continues, the entire education system might collapse from sheer stupidity, and I’m not sure that’s not the goal…
citizen dave
Google tells me the Florida Governor’s race filing deadline is July 25. If TFG wants to truly take on desantis, run against him. Google also says that 10 candidates, 7 Democrats, had filed a full year before the deadline. What a state!
JPL
@Alison Rose ???: This
Searcher
I assume the Pelosi endorsement is to reassure Democratic voters that he is indeed a Real Democrat who will play nice and not defect back to the Republicans 30 minutes after taking the oath of office.
Rusty
New Hampshire still has Florida beat. Our commissioner of Education, Edelblut, home schooled his six kids and is open hostile to public schools. He worked with the legislature for a bill to gut required school curriculums so towns could slash their school budgets. Out went foreign languages, computer literacy, art, music, physical education, engineering and a bunch more. Thankfully even the crazy right wing controlled legislature realized that was a bridge too far. So for the moment they are trying to pass a law that if you can pass once in a town to cap school spending, it can’t be ever go up unless you pass another spending plan by a super majority that will be a practical impossibility. If you are planning to have kids, or have young ones, don’t move here. There won’t be any school systems in ten years at the rate things are going.
Kent
@raven: Exactly. And there are a bazillion teacher web sites out there and teacher forums on every subject where material is shared. The greater difficulty is usually paring things down. If you are using Chromebooks and some classroom management site like Google Classroom you can point your students to any material you want. It is limitless
The nice thing about stuff like Google classroom is that it is essentially confidential. No one who isn’t one of my students can assess my Google Classroom assignment stream. Unlike in the old days when we used to post assignments up to school web sites that were publicly viewable by anyone.
cain
@jnfr:
They hate everyone – it won’t matter. They especially hate strong women.
Martin
BTW, textbook review is a fucking sham even in the best of circumstances, so I’m having a hard time getting worked up over this. It suffers from everything from bribery to religious nut jobs unqualified to review textbooks being on the review board. I guarantee none of the board members read even a single one of those books.
If I had to guess, 41% of the books mentioned that they were compliant with common core standards, and that was the source of the removal, with the board members saying that common core = critical race theory.
scav
Corcoran Restricts Teaching
Christianity Refuses Thought.
Cruelty Reinforces Theocracy.
Kay
@Cameron:
Thirty years this sleaze was operating with complete impunity until he encountered Julie Brown :)
One person! We should give her January 6th. Crack that case.
Bex
@wetzel: Which Methodist seminary? The United Methodist Church is going to split over same sex marriage when it finally gets around to meeting, post pandemic.
Yarrow
OMG, getting a Covid test is a nightmare. Can’t schedule except online. Earliest available is tomorrow. No one seems to know what “test-to-treat” is and by the time the test is done and results come back it will be too late to take the antiviral. It totally sucks.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Good recap. It’s been a very long time since I was in school and very few of my family currently have pre-college age kids.
CliosFanBoy
Ona related note, the God-bothers in Texas are running a local library system, apparently meeting now in secret.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/04/17/public-libraries-books-censorship/
Baud
@Yarrow:
According to this, only certain locations participate.
https://aspr.hhs.gov/TestToTreat/Pages/process.aspx
burnspbesq
@bbleh:
And the vast majority of Floridians won’t care, as long as UF and FSU football are included in whatever top tier evolves to replace the current Power Five conferences.
laura
So many data points just seem to add up to an apartheid america- or am I reading all this wrong? The wholesale attempts to just disappear non white “christians” from the public space and creating a monetized vigilante force to spy on your neighbors and family members and teachers and so it goes. The war on women as people with substantive rights and agency – the sheer volume of shittiness- who’s behind all of this fuckery? Why now?
Peale
@Martin: Yep. I highly doubt that they read every single word problem in every text book to find hidden CRT or Gay Grooming examples. Probably got rid of a textbook because it was co-authored by Horatio Gay, Phd. And another because it had a photo of a minority doing math on the cover. Most were removed because common core and novel pedagogy. The reason they won’t give examples of CRT is that if they did, the public would realize that they think it racist to include images of a multi-ethinic student body studying happily together.
Yarrow
@Baud: I have called several of the locations on the list near me. They have not heard of it. Earliest available Covid test appointment at them is tomorrow. You can’t just walk in – they send you to the website. And after that, they still don’t know what it is.
banditqueen
How can any ‘anti-CRT’ high school diploma–apart from college–have any value under their dumbed down criteria? These students–who are already busy with after school jobs, babysitting younger siblings, etc–won’t have a high school diploma that represents basic preparation for the world. They won’t be ready for trade schools, college, the military–this ‘anti-CRT’ takeover has to be stopped.
cain
I’d bet that the alternative are charter schools run by GOP mega donors as well.
They have to have some standards, otherwise they can’t bring in the good sports talents to their sports teams. /s
MisterForkbeard
@scav: This is a good point. I bet you there’s something in one of these textbooks that says: “On average, women may 92% of what men make for doing the same job. Robert makes $120,000 each year. Assuming Sally and Robert make the average amounts, how much does Sally make?”
Peale
@laura: We’re supposed to someone still believe that its rich people looking for votes to keep their tax cuts. Because the idea that there are rich fascist billionaires who actually believe that race mixing is a problem or that women shouldn’t press charges against powerful men who molest them makes white liberals cringe. Once you get a few million in the bank, you’re supposed to stop taking the culture war seriously.
Martin
@raven: Yep. California is making an effort on that as well.
There are two major initiatives, one for K-12 and one for higher ed. I was involved in the latter initiative, learning a few lessons from some of the problems with the former.
The underlying problem with these efforts (along with most online course efforts I’ve been involved with) is a very pedestrian one – the manner in which instructors are paid makes it extremely difficult to motivate participation in these efforts. Grants and course release can work pretty well in higher ed, but doesn’t really transfer as nicely to K-12. And of course you’re competing with the existing royalty system from publishers.
The problem here is while the idea is a good one, the details of its implementation are everything, and not often enough to people like me who live in the world of the details get opportunities to shape these policies.
randy khan
@Roger Moore:
I was thinking more or less the same thing, with a focus on political contributions rather than outright bribery (although I know that outright bribery has happened in book selection in the past). I mean, how ideological can a math book be? It’s not like you’re going to have word problems on disproportionate prosecution of Black people.
burnspbesq
@Betty Cracker:
Accrediting agencies are toothless. As Exhibit A, I offer the continued accreditation of the University of Nasty Cheaters at Chapel Hell.
Searcher
@MisterForkbeard: In 1862, President Lincoln paid 900-odd slaveholders $300 for each slave they were compelled to emancipate in the District of Columbia. Assuming the $300 was invested at a 10% APR until the year 2022, how much money should each of their descendants be forced to pay in reparations?
Geminid
@trollhattan: Crist polls well. But I think Fried or Taddeo would do as well as Crist in a general election, even though their respective “strengths” appear to be different. The feisty Fried might have a greater upside.
But Florida is terra incognita to me when it comes to politics. It’s a very singular state.
Kent
@Brachiator: As a teacher and parent of college age kids I can tell you there are TWO reasons why students take AP classes.
First, because AP classes just look better on your transcript than regular classes. And some schools weight AP classes higher in their proprietary admissions formulas, or when calculating GPA.
And second, for the actual college credit that some (not all) schools grant for passing the AP exams with a 3, 4, or 5 score.
What the College Board seems to be saying is that if schools or states are not teaching all of the required AP curriculum for history and literature then they will be banned from using the AP designator on HS transcripts since the designator AP or “Advanced Placement” is trademarked and they are entitled to do quality control. So schools will be forced to call those classes Honors US History or some such, not AP US History.
Martin
@Kent: Perfectly correct.
A number of years back the UC and CSU systems sent a letter to Kansas telling them that teaching evolution was a requirement for the state of California to recognize their science classes for the purpose of meeting admissions requirements to our systems. Basically, we threatened to decertify their entire high school science curriculum. That helped to get the Kansas legislature to back off on their creationism policy.
The same thing will happen here. And it won’t just be California, but probably a number of the ivies as well, MA and NY higher education systems, etc. I doubt any of these states will back down though. This is now a national movement. The GOP will dig in until they are voted out.
Old School
@burnspbesq: But when UNC said there was academic fraud occurring, that was a typo. So nothing to see.
Roger Moore
@randy khan:
I meant “pay off” in the broadest sense. That could be cash bribes or it could be contributions to the right political campaigns. Though given how corrupt Republican campaigns have become, it’s not clear to me how big the difference is in practice.
Kent
They are just getting “hit lists” put out by various right wing evangelical organizations. They are too lazy to actually read all this material themselves. Since it is all completely untransparent, no one has a fucking clue why different texts get on the list. It could be bullshit reasons having nothing to do with the content. Like, for example, the parent company donates to Democrats or is LGBT-friendly. That kind of shit.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Reading some quotes from the people driving this over at KOS it sounds more like the intended audience for this Gay Math nonsense is Evangelical parents to keep them sending their kids to Religious schools. A bit like that Horse Paste “cure” for COVID; the point is to throw doubt on the experts so the marks aren’t distracted from the grift.
Citizen Alan
@laura: I remember in 2002 when The Emerging Democratic Majority by Judis and Edroso came out and everyone at Kos was crowing over it. And my thought even then was “I bet the GOP can delay that emerging Democratic majority for a good long while if they bring back Jim Crow. And a very, very long time if they impose Apartheid on us all.” And 20 years later, here we are.
Sure Lurkalot
My dear departed mother was the first to admit she barely graduated high school (in 1940). She was reasonably astute but not particularly curious, more interested in social activities, getting married and having kids.
But she did know to rely on my public school teachers to educate me. She would never presume to know what should be taught and beyond being engaged in my education via teacher parent conferences, national test scores and report cards, never got involved in curricula, course choices (when I got to high school) and the like.
That may be the opposite of the current spectrum where many parents are super dialed in, but looking back, she at least let people do their damn jobs.
dm
I was wondering about the math books when I first heard this story yesterday. Now that I see that among their bugaboos is the Common Core I’m amazed to hear they found any math books that passed their criteria.
Another Scott
Crist and/or his people must have asked Nancy SMASH for her endorsement – she wouldn’t give it out of the blue.
It’s a way to get his name in the news, at little cost it seems to me. And Nancy SMASH can help raise mountains of money if Charlie needs it (I would be surprised if he does).
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@laura: because they’re losing. They’ve been losing since 1992, when Reagan’s duly anointed heir lost hard to some cracker no-name Democrat from Arkansas. Not necessarily politically, but culturally. They are losing hard. And they’re going to take advantage of their opponents lack of discipline and laziness, their fear of rocking boats or causing scenes, and they are going to lie, steal, cheat and (soon) murder until they get things how they like ’em.
People who are facing an existential threat do desperate things.
That’s “why now”.
Constance Reader
Actually, I think you do want DeSantis to win the governor’s race, because if he loses he will announce his presidential bid during his concession speech. Losing would free him up to go all in on the presidency.
japa21
@Peale:
Tell you what. I am perfectly willing to test that hypothesis. Please arrange for someone to put a few million bucks in my bank account.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@SiubhanDuinne:
Maybe, although it makes me wonder if the reporter got it wrong.
Anyone know if there’s audio?
Martin
@Kent: I don’t think the AP credit at the college is that much of a draw. At least, in our work with students that wasn’t the case. The real draw is the role in admissions.
Here’s how UC includes AP, which is more aggressive than most universities, but not terribly different in general.
Each student on their read sheet has the number of AP courses they took, as well as the scores from AP exams in grades 10, 11 along with tests planned to take in grade 12. Alongside that we see the number of AP courses offered by the school the student attended, as well as the average number of AP courses students at that school take, as well as the average number of AP courses students from that school who were previously admitted to UC had taken.
This is part of both our local context evaluation of students (how they compare to other students from that same high school) and the opportunity to learn evaluation of whether they took advantage of learning opportunities.
We are aware of the downsides to this system. We give a 1.2x multiplier to all honors, and AP course grades, but cap it at 8 semesters. We also have data on how well students perform after they attend to contextualize all of this data. The goal here being that a good student at a low income school with few if any AP courses may outperform a student from a high income school with a zillion AP courses and we want to make sure the former student isn’t losing a slot to the latter student. I would always argue I’d rather have a student with an A in precalculus than a student with a B in AP Calc AB or BC, and I had the receipts to prove it.
The main problem here is that there is this massive disconnect between students/parents and how the higher ed systems are operating. The higher ed systems are signaling to students/parents that they are better off staying at a low-income school where they are a top 10% student, than moving to a high-income school where they are a top 30% student. They seem to think the ‘reputation’ of a school matters. It doesn’t. It usually works against them if it puts them in a student body where the top 10% of students have unlimited SAT prep and tutoring due to the income. It’s also a signal that grades beat AP. Students that are uncertain about moving into AP courses shouldn’t be pushed too hard, because a lower grade there will hurt them more than having the AP on their transcript.
I’ve also gotten into heated arguments with AP instructors that argued that students that got AP=4 scores didn’t deserve As in their course, and that they’d add on all of this additional content above the AP standard. None of that is beneficial to the student. Make sure they know the AP curriculum inside and out. Nobody cares if they know more, because we have no way to measure that, and besides, our curriculum will not adapt to that one student. Even a student with credit for AP calc is going to have to repeat a fair bit of that material because of students that got lower scores, that failed to learn some key elements.
The problem is that we communicate this information back up through school administrators which never makes it down to instructors and parents because it winds up being incompatible with their goals and incentives for the school. That’s why college admission is so stressful – everyone thinks they know how it works, and virtually every one of them is completely wrong.
Roger Moore
@Constance Reader:
It’s not enough for DeSantis to declare his candidacy; he needs to win the nomination. If he loses, he’ll have a much harder path to the nomination because he’ll be covered in loser stink.
Martin
@dm: It’s illegal to teach common core in Texas, so there’s a market for textbooks that explicitly state they do not satisfy common core (even if they fully satisfy common core).
Another Scott
@Lacuna Synecdoche:
I don’t see/hear the offending word.
(via TeamPelosi)
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Martin:
“There is no gambling going on in this establishment.”
Baud
@Another Scott:
That seems to be different from the statement the papers got.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Betty Cracker:
Maybe Rand Paul will create an accrediting agency they can switch to.
I suspect that the goal is collapsing the public education system, so they can direct funds to private schools and create pressure for parents to choose them.
ian
@randy khan:
The education classes I took at University of Wyoming actually encouraged this sort of thing. Including people who are marginalized in word problems is a way for students to see reflections of themselves in the problems they are working on. By creating a personal connection to the student with the problem you increase motivation and encourage participation. It is good for students to see reflections of themselves in problems they work on (and see versions of themselves in media, and so on.)
Martin
@burnspbesq: That’s not entirely true. Some accreditation agencies are solid. Many are toothless. I find the law school accreditation to be just plain weird. WASC is pretty good. I should say, they’re okay, but they’re on the trajectory to be pretty good. I’ve worked with them quite a bit on improving their process and I’m now convinced they know exactly what they should be doing, but getting compliance out of the schools is hard. There is monumental pushback from schools, particularly from disciplines that are unaccustomed to being held accountable for what and how they teach. K-12 is right there, they get this. Higher ed is a real crap shoot. LCME is a mixed bag. I find their process to be in ways inadequate but they’re better than most at putting their foot down.
andy
@Roger Moore: This. American conservatives are desperate to bring Russian-style oligarchy to the US, and all the delicious grift and bribes that go along with it. Sure, none of that will lead to national greatness, as we’ve seen with Russia’s latest adventures, but a rich man can live like an emperor in a failed state, and THAT, along with the pleasure of watching the poors knife each other for their entertainment, is what these guys are desperate to enjoy for themselves.
cmorenc
Florida under DeSantis has also become surprisingly friendly to the marijuana industry – by permitting Florida physicians to qualify patients for medical marijuana by the sort of standards prevailing among “pot doctors” in Colorado – because some of DeSantis’s major contributors secured the necessary franchises to run growing operations and chains of dispensaries. I have a good friend who lives in the Orlando area who walks 18 holes of golf a day and suffers no condition beyond some garden-variety minor orthopedic aches and pains normal for a 70 year old that elsewhere wouldn’t qualify for any more treatment than some occasional OTC Naproxin. You do have to get the doctor to periodically re-certify you (not sure if the period is 8 months or yearly), but that’s just a payoff boon to bring physicians in on the grift. However, the big grift is to DeSantis’s major contributors running the big medical marijuana operations.
dww44
@Sure Lurkalot:
This is one of the very worst consequences of the constant cultural war battles that Republican led states have inflicted upon the country. They are destroying any semblance of good governance. They are destroying our civic institutions.
catclub
@Roger Moore: I got here when the comment count was 120, but my overlooked idea was covered in comment #2.
Thanks!
J.
Back in the 1990s, I edited textbooks for a living. I worked for several major publishers, editing college textbooks at first and then ones for high school and middle school students. During that time there was a big movement underway to revise social studies textbooks to be more inclusive — or add what Republicans today would call Critical Race Theory. We editors/writers/researchers were told we needed to add more women, more Black people, more Asians, etc. Except for Texas and one other state (I forget which one, but I don’t think it was Florida), which had special rules for what was allowed into their textbooks (i.e., not CRT). So, sadly, this really isn’t anything new. It’s just DeSantis trying to grab some media attention before an election.
Peale
@ian: That’s why I think some people are still fooling themselves thinking that they are going to stop at instances of “CRT” that discuss history and institutional inequality. They are to the point where the existence of “Diversity” is just too much of a burden for them. So a word problem that mentions a girl named Aaliyah and a boy named Jung-Hoon taking 2 trains at different speeds is as objectionable as a statistics problem about persistent inequality. Jack and Jill will not be replaced!
Martin
@ian: The challenge with that is what the College Board is now finding with the SAT. While I wholly applaud their changes to the tests, not all students have the same lived experiences so if you have a recent immigrant taking the test, the questions may make no goddamn sense to them because they’re put in a context that they’ve never experienced, or the process by which they evaluate the context may be completely different.
As such, students with English as a 2nd language are really struggling with the tests in ways that they didn’t before – not necessarily because of a language issue, but because their non-english first language suggests a different set of experiences they now need to adapt to the US-centric test. This problem can be remedied, and the College Board is working on it, but there’s some real unintended consequences to trying to do this on such a broad scale.
Martin
@Peale: Not how it works. It’s an alliance. The culture warriors need funding but have votes, the billionaires want tax cuts but need votes. It’s a simple trade. Neither one needs to believe in the other, but they can’t achieve their goals alone.
matt
Seems like a corrupt process designed to let state officials steer money where they choose without any kind of oversight.
NotMax
Have not a whit of evidence to support it yet I can’t help but suspect if one digs deep enough he or she will find Jebbie’s brother Neil’s grubby fingerprints on the textbook travesty.
Martin
@J.: You guys aren’t subtle about it, though. “Brittany, DeLeroy, and Jeong-Hoon are playing marbles…”
Gravenstone
@jnfr: To be fair, Republicans hate everyone outside their tribe. And half the people within it. Let the RINO wars continue.
jl
Johnny has ten building blocks and there are three colors: black, white and red. Three are black and 2 are white, how many red blocks does Johnny have?
Ok, any fool can see that is multiculturalism, a subtext advocating Native American, and putting Whites in the minority. Also, it’s too hard, and no yellow blocks, implying that they are smarter at math and don’t even need to do such a problem.
Only a fool or a knave would deny the obvious.
jl
BJ blog software created a duplicate comment when I tried to edit the existing one to add a missing word. BJ blog software cannot do math. And any fool can see that the software didn’t learn math right because its textbook was full of CRT propaganda.
I have a hunch that eliminating any textbook that connected math to any real life experience or added a hint of fun was part of the book banning program. Making learning boring, nasty and brutish is also a reactionary revanchist principle, so no one wants to try it.
oatler
@The Moar You Know:
Right on.
oatler
@The Moar You Know:
Right on.
Gravenstone
Wonder if you would get a better response if you used that exact formulation?
wetzel
This is like eating a big mac every day for ten years, but I’ve written thousands of practice items for college science. In my professional opinion, the general quality of on-line high school learning materials and curriculum is crap. Including Khan Academy, but especially any product made by the State of Georgia or Dekalb County. The quality is almost always crap. They have lost the ability to represent the bird’s eye view on anything.
No state government in the United States has the ethos for this. It’s curriculum by kakistocracy and kleptocracy, the local, state, federal governments, their contractors and college board. Computerized delivery of curriculum without any pedogogy or rational basis in educational practice under Piaget or Vygostky, no matter how you look at development. It’s just one more thing that has the United States on the road to ruin, hurtling into a wood chipper, going to hell in a hand basket, or at least performing somewhat suboptimally in the education department. I don’t know. I think straightforward textbooks were better. In middle school or high school, we hardly ever get a textbook for a class anymore that the student takes home and which the teacher uses to organize lessons.
NotMax
@jl
And which groomer(s) are giving the blocks to Johnny?
//
Martin
@NotMax: Not needed. All textbook review boards are a travesty. This is just the one that got a big writeup. Happens everywhere, all the time, and has for decades. Feynman was on the CA textbook board in the mid-60s.
Old School
jl
@Martin: Not the kind of story I expected, but enlightening. I recommend everyone read it.
Edit: the teachers themselves should play a big role in curriculum development and textbook selection. Countries with best education reform do that.
Scout211
@Old School:
I came here to post that. She is a Trump appointed federal judge. Go figure.
jl
@Old School: need to get a good medical grade NIOSH approved N95 or mask of similar quality. I forget all the names and codes. KN94 is another one? Anyway, people can look up the masks that offer highest level of protection.
Need to find masks that are good enough so you are protected for prolonged periods even when masked people are in the minority.
KM in NS
@Rusty: hmmm… “he” home-schooled his kids?! I suspect his poor, downtrodden wife did the heavy lifting, along with keeping house, cooking meals, etc.
Why should these clueless homeschoolers be allowed to weigh in on public education in any way, shape or form?! They don’t have any skin in the game.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Your instincts on that are sound.
Kay
@Scout211:
James Fallows
@JamesFallows
·42m
The judge who made this ruling, age 33 when (lifetime) appointed by Trump, was rammed through by GOP *after* the 2020 election, and was deemed “not qualified” by the ABA For your “Oh, yes, integrity of the federal judiciary really matters” file.
Tenar Arha
@Yarrow: I don’t know where you are, but maybe this will help? I remember I read a thread on Twitter by a doctor a day or two ago about the hoops he had to jump through to get his parents treated after they both got infected, I found it here, read up & down thread for more details
https://twitter.com/Farzad_MD/status/1514581787430821888
I hope you see this & it’s helpful
NotMax
@Martin
Neil Bush has a vested interest in profiting from matters in the education sphere, so I remain suspicious of his swooping in to obtain advantage via any remaining family contacts within Florida state government.
Jackie
@Constance Reader: If DeSantis loses the Governor’s election, he’ll be considered a loser and not be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. The only loser republicans like is TFG.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
It’s an enormous mistake to think rich people as a group are only siding with the culture warriors as a crass attempt to get votes. Yes, there are probably some people like that, but there are also a lot of ultra-rich people who are just as bigoted and interested in the culture wars for their own sake as the people they’re working with. Companies like Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A aren’t anomalies.
Another Scott
@wetzel: Online learning is really, really hard.
When I was taking Physics in Chicago in the late 1970s, one of the profs said once (almost as a check-mark item) that we should go play with the U of I “Plato” terminals in a dark basement somewhere. I tried it once, it didn’t click with me at all, and never went back. The plasma display screen was neat though.
Teachers need to be able to see their students’ reactions to know what’s working, what pace to use, what needs to be changed. It’s really hard to get that with online leaning; even harder with canned lessons. Too much of that stuff – even now – is fancy filmstrips, and those of us of a certain age know how wonderful those things were…
Yeah, messing with textbooks is a problem, but it’s not a new problem. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan of progress. Dead-tree books are going away, slowly, and school systems need to figure out how to create curricula that makes sense for their communities (and does more than make tech whizkids rich) even with increasingly noisy and nasty knownothings who are riled up by RWNJs who only care about power…
Cheers,
Scott.
catclub
The NPR feature on a concession by the loser in an election being a thing that USED to happen in every single election in the United States, neglected to mention that ALL the people likely to not concede in the future are Republicans.
Kay
It’s 4 states- Georgia, Missouri, Ohio and Nebraska. Conservatives aren’t allowed to talk about it, probably fearing, rightly, that domestic violence and sexual assault are an actual advantage and opposing domestic violence and sexual assault could lose them a primary.
Now controversial on the Right to oppose stalking your ex wife and threatening to kill her. Can’t risk alienating the pro-domestic violence base.
cain
The problem is – those schools will be vastly more expensive than public schools. It’s already expensive now – they’ve probably already racked up debt just dealing with daycare. After that is college – it will make education into something only upper middle class can afford. You’ll be bankrupting the parent generation (who if htey are millennials are still paying their own college debt) and then a new generation of college students also getting into debt)
The whole thing is untenable. We really need to get off this “low taxes” train.
Roger Moore
@jl:
The big ones I’ve seen around here are the N95 (meets American standards), KN95 (meets Chinese standards), and KF94 (meets Korean standards). The European FFP2 is similar. I personally prefer the KF94, which I find the most comfortable to wear for a long period. Of course YMMV. I would strongly recommend trying the different models to find the one you find most comfortable. This is at least as important as the technical characteristics of the mask. A theoretically perfect mask you can’t stand to wear will be less effective in practice than a pretty good one that’s comfortable enough to wear all day.
Martin
@Roger Moore: I didn’t suggest there wouldn’t be overlap between the two groups, just that you don’t need to look for culture war support from GOP megadonors as an explanation. They will support the GOP regardless of their culture war views primarily because they know that the culture warriors will go to bat for them on the taxes.
This is part of the ‘voting against your interests’ fallacy that we see. Populist conservatives can rail against the big banks and still take their money because they understand the trade being made here.
Of course there are culture war billionaires like the Mercers and the DeVos and yes they are very important to the current GOP trajectory, but at the same time, there’s a zillion of other big money donors to the GOP that could care less if the country goes up in flames so long as they keep their carried interest deduction.
jl
Need to ban this filth:
Cripple Creek
I got a girl and she loves me
She’s as sweet as sweet can be
She’s got eyes of baby blue
Makes my gun shoot straight and true.
I got a gal at the head of the creek,
Go up to see her ’bout the middle of the week.
Kiss her on the mouth just as sweet as wine.
Wraps herself around me like a sweet potato vine.
Martin
@jl: I highly recommend the 3M Aura mask. That’s what I used when I was caring for my son – wore it 23 hours a day, including while I slept. Great fit, and pretty comfortable.
jl
thanks for info. Apparently I got the fancy mask names correct.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’d forgotten, if I ever knew, that they came from Schlitz money.
I think Rebekah Mercer is a god-botherer, too. And the Coors family, and….
TonyG
@Roger Moore: Ha. That would make sense. But maybe it’s all that Critical Race Theory in the algebra.
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Roy Moore is proof that grooming is wickedness, but smash and grab is just fine.
David Fud
@wetzel: I believe that Unitarians came out of a generational/liberal reaction to the Puritans. I believe there are also Anglican churches which were converted to Unitarian churches in the Northeastern United States. This block quote isn’t perfectly on point, but it give something of an idea about it.
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yep. Hard to explain, but the Mercers aren’t just doing this because of his $7 billion back taxes owed. It seems like every state has its Betsy DeVoss billionaire. In Wisconsin, its the hardware baron.
Martin
@Kay: Worth noting here that Claire McCaskill helped engineer the Todd Aiken win for precisely this benefit. The Democratic nominee in those states aren’t going to be so deferential to their domestic violence background.
jl
@TonyG: Maybe textbook companies started to send some bribes to Blacks and Hispanics? I hope you all can see the pure hell produced by radical race leveling.
David Fud
@wetzel: I believe that Unitarians came out of a generational/liberal reaction to the Puritans. I believe there are also Anglican churches which were converted to Unitarian churches in the Northeastern United States. This block quote isn’t perfectly on point, but it give something of an idea about it. (prior comment died in moderation).
Another Scott
@cain: +1
Plus, they want to keep the public schools for the sports and extra-curricular activities that they want their home-schooled kids to participate in.
Too many of these people that want it all without paying anything for it didn’t read and understand Aesop’s Fables…
Grr…,
Scott.
Gravenstone
Close. DeSantis wants to shove a few dozen shivs in Trump’s back, while playing the rubes to inherit Trump’s base.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
It’s the logical extension of Reagan’s 11th Commandment. If you aren’t allowed to speak ill of your fellow Republicans, then they will be free to do any unspeakable thing without facing consequences inside the party. If you’re in what’s effectively a single party state, they won’t face consequences outside the party, either.
Gravenstone
@oatler: And no doubt, this clown has just the right prophet in mind to reign? Maybe someone who looks a lot like himself?
Anonymous At Work
@burnspbesq: Disagree about as strongly as possible. A few years ago, Kentucky tried this with a stacked U of Louisville BoD. Accreditation agency put the BoD on notice and Kentucky, under Matt Bevin back down in a hurry. Accreditation is how your undergraduates get into graduate schools, how your professional schools have their graduates take professional exams (like, say, medical boards or bar exam), links into athletic eligibility, etc.
To continue Betty’s example, UF has a truly screwed up policy that happened at light speed once accreditation was put on the table. The policy reads half “We’ll lose accreditation for a Top Ten undergrad school if not” and half “We need to forestall federal civil rights lawsuits that we are definitely going to lose.” A true POS policy but in academic politics, it was a white flag.
gene108
@Kent:
It depends on how many top-tier private universities exist in FL, with enough in-state students to have any pull.
I don’t think FL Republicans will care what out of state schools do. That’ll just keep more people in state.
Even if Ivy League schools or other top to middle tier out of state private schools reject FL public school students, I’m not sure the numbers of FL students applying, and thus families affected, will be enough to threaten elected Republicans chances for election.
wetzel
@jl: Hi there. I think the best all around N95 for comfort and expense are the Kimberly Clark’s from Amazon.
You look like a duck, but it gives you a nice air pocket in front of your mouth. I think they are comfortable for much longer than other types. They are simple and inexpensive.
https://www.amazon.com/Kimberly-Clark-Respirator-53358-NIOSH-Approved-Respirators/dp/B08NVDFB3R/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=kimberly+clark+n95+mask&qid=1650310660&sr=8-1
David Fud
@Roger Moore:
This is an incredible idea that some academic should run with. Seriously. Fight stupid with Creative Commons Licensing.
Kay
@Martin:
I hope so. Normalizing domestic violence and sexual assualt is really, really bad for women- and children, who also live in these homes.
There’s a double standard for conservative men and liberal men on these issues, but I’m good with it. They can have the stalkers and the assaulters. Hershel Walker terrorized his ex wife for four years. The Nebraska candidate grabbed young women, shoved his hands inside their clothes and groped them. He should have been arrested. He should still be arrested. It’s an assault. It’s a criminal act in every state.
wetzel
@David Fud: It was Dr. Edward Frost who described Unitarianism as an offshoot of Methodism. He was pastor of the Atlanta congregation for twenty years. I remember it clearly. Dr. Frost was always grounded, so he would not have made that up. I dunno. Hard to figure. Don’t quote me!!
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: Crist is damn sure going to need the money if he wins — any Democrat who wins will need lots of money. So far, Crist has about $8M while DeSantis has upwards of $130M. Money isn’t everything, but that’s a staggering divide.
Kay
I love the helplessness of it. The mysterious young voters- what do they think? Let’s speculate for another 6 months instead of asking them. Surely someone will come up with a persuasive “theory” about what these odd, unknowable people think.
Yutsano
@oatler: When does Iran sue for copyright infringement?
Betty Cracker
@Lacuna Synecdoche: I made a half-assed attempt to verify if Pelosi’s endorsement was a written or verbal statement. I wasn’t able to categorically rule out verbal, but it sure sounded like the media outlets received a written statement with that word, which is odd.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’d share what the young voters I know say, but someone would insult them, and then I’d get pissed off. So I won’t. ;-)
taumaturgo
@Andrew: Charlie checks all the boxes for the conservative democrat leadership. He is a conservative, corporate-bought, wishy-washy opportunist, and extra points for being an ex-republican. No worries. He’ll go down in flames and wait for it, the progressives will be blamed.
laura
@jl: take a look at the AirQueen nano mask. I’ve been using them since April 2020- the fit, the breathability and the I’m forgetting I’m wearing a mask is really good. I hope that you may find they suit your needs.
Brachiator
@Kay:
Surely there must be some young voters congregating outside an Applebee’s somehere, waiting to be interviewed.
Peale
@Kay: Let’s see. Maybe, just maybe the moderates should answer that question. Oh, wait. They’ll spend 50 minutes telling their young voters how everything they wanted Biden to do was wrong and how the mature thing to do is nothing about their concerns.
Sloane Ranger
When I was at teacher training college back in the late 1970’s I remember a discussion we had about using batting averages in cricket when setting maths problems. The thinking was that while English, West Indian and Asian (Indian subcontinent) kids could reasonably be expected to have a cultural understanding of the game, those kids whose parents came from China and Africa wouldn’t, and this would disadvantage them.
Kay
@Peale:
I listened to a radio interview with a person who works for major league baseball. His job is to figure out what might make young people go to ball parks and follow baseball. So he asks them and then he tries things- all day, every day. He had no “theories”. Theories were not part of it.
RaflW
Most likely said in some form upthread, but: “Since state officials refuse to provide examples of content that violated the criteria…” book publishers who submitted textbooks that were rejected should sue.
If the process of selection by a public institution isn’t public, it’s indistinguishable from a criminal enterprise, because there’s no way to prove that favoritism towards approved vendors wasn’t the root cause.
Peale
@Kay: The frustrating thing is that I’m 52 and I’ve been here before. Twice! The Democrats have had 30 years to figure out what gets young people to the polls in off year elections. Happened under Clinton. Happened under Obama. They win +30 with the millennials under Obama and not 12 years later that cohort is down to +7. 12 years later, Biden won the next 18-30 cohort +28. Are they going to just let that group slide for 12 years, too and then come back to the polls as they get older as a more conservative cohort? So what happened? Like they are shocked every time this is an issue. The debrief from the party moderates is “We don’t need to change anything. The youth are just the youth and their concerns are stupid anyway. Plus we understand Facebook, but now the kids are on Instagram and we don’t know what do do.”
Bostondreams
So the social studies adoption will be brutal. Books may not have anything related to the 1619 project, questions the founding documents, has CRT, social justice, or social and emotional learning. Check out the requirements here, particular about pages 22-26.
https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/SocialStudies-IM-Spec.pdf
cain
Yeah, but a lot of rich republicans want to send their kids to Cornell, Yale or Duke – so they can get a jump on their political careers.
Starfish
@Kent: I bet rental fees are being paid for the digital text books. A lot of software stuff now works on the rental model and not on the ownership model. This can ultimately cost more in the long run, depending on what the cost is and how often books are replaced.
majii
Thinking and writing from the perspective of a retired public high school social studies teacher, the proliferation of these types of laws will cause the national teacher shortage to increase. The writer is correct in mentioning social studies is next on the list of these vicious creatures who are making things up as they destroy their states’ educational systems. I could help fill the gap here in GA for Grades 4-8 because I am qualified to work in middle grades, but because of these types of laws and other right-wing BS, there is no way I’m going back into the classroom.
Starfish
This was the article that I read on the topic. What alarmed me was that
Having only one option for certain classes in a year when there are potential supply chain issues does not seem particularly smart.
This listed some of the publishers being rejected and “Oh, okay, you are rejecting Houghton Mifflin.”
Liminal Owl
@oatler: I like your title.