Early last month, Gov. Scott proposed changing the way school textbooks are adopted in Florida (see our previous post here). Currently, the state Board of Education must approve a list of books from which school districts can choose. Scott said he wanted to get the Board out of that process and leave book adoptions up to each district.
Now the Board has announced that they like that idea and they’re going to work with the state legislature to see if they can make that change happen.
We need to keep a close eye on this issue. First, if a bill is introduced in the legislature, we need to track it every step of the way to make sure no anti-evolution “academic freedom” language gets slipped in there. Then if the bill becomes law, our job of monitoring the quality of science textbooks will get much more difficult. Instead of focusing most of our attention on Tallahassee, we instead would have to be aware of what’s going on in nearly every single district throughout the state. That could be a nightmare.
Any adopted book MUST meet the Florida science standards.