Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he’s protecting kids from indoctrination and political agendas, but the zeal with which he has pushed expansive efforts to remake the Florida education system also represents an effort to influence young minds.
However you view DeSantis’ motivations, he is getting results.
The College Board, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Advanced Placement program offered across high schools, said it would change a new AP African American studies course that DeSantis said violated a state law to restrict certain lessons about race in schools.
His state’s Department of Education complained the college-level course mentioned Black queer theory and the idea of intersectionality. Read more about why Florida rejected the course.
“Governor DeSantis, are you really trying to lead us into an era akin to communism that provides censorship of free thoughts?” the civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said at a press conference on Wednesday in Florida, where he announced he would sue DeSantis on behalf of three high school students if DeSantis would not negotiate with the College Board about the AP course.
The state attorney general has launched a discrimination investigation into whether the Fairfax County Public Schools system – including Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a nationally recognized Virginia magnet school – discriminated against students by not informing them of recognition under the National Merit Scholarship program.
The students qualified for recognition but did not advance in the competition for a scholarship.
Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, according to CNN’s report, claimed these revelations were a result of the “maniacal focus on equal outcomes for all students at all costs.”
“The failure of numerous Fairfax County schools to inform students of their national merit awards could serve as a Virginia human rights violation,” the governor’s office said in a previous statement provided to CNN.
Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent Michelle Reid told CNN the recognitions should have come earlier, but cited a lack of a “division-wide protocol” rather than any kind of mania about equity. Read more about the controversy.
