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Group Plans Lawsuit Over Florida Textbook Adoption Changes
August 11, 2011
A Boca Raton group that believes some Florida textbooks are slanted to favor Islamic beliefs plans to file a lawsuit against the state of Florida and Gov. Rick Scott for approving a new law that changes the state’s textbook adoption process.
Citizens for National Security will file its lawsuit Thursday in a Palm Beach County circuit court, saying the new law violates the state constitution’s promise of a “high-quality” education.
The dramatic changes to the textbook adoption process contained in SB 2120, a new state law tied to the education budget, eliminated the use of large statewide committees of public school teachers, administrators, school board members and private citizens to review textbooks.
Instead, the education commissioner hand-picks three state or national “subject matter experts” to examine the books, with only two people reviewing the books and the third acting as a tie-breaker.
“It is not possible for two people to review all the textbooks in Florida within a 4 month period of time,” the complaint says. “Prior to the passage of SB 2120, the selection/adoption process for history and geography textbooks required the reviews of more than 40 people, and took approximately one year to complete.”
Citizens for National Security Chairman William Saxton said his group believes the new law removes a valuable form of oversight from the textbook selection process.
“We need to have the new law repealed because what the new law does is totally disenfranchise the public from having any role in the selection of K-12 public textbooks,” Saxton said. “In the old law it wasn’t a significant role, but it was a role. There was oversight.”
Barry Silver, an attorney representing Citizens for National Security and a former Democratic state representative, said changing the textbook adoption policies opens the window to religious indoctrination of children.
He called textbook selection a “monumental undertaking” and the suggestion that three people could handle this task is “absolutely ridiculous” because it is so time-consuming.
“We need more people, not less, engaged in that task,” Silver said.
Saxton said his group has helped conduct a review of existing textbooks and found that some “embrace or embellish” Islamic values over Judeo-Christian values. Saxton said he believes through lobbying textbook adoption committees and textbook publishers, Islamic groups have gotten their point of view into textbooks.
“It’s another form of jihad,” Saxton said, with “hearts and minds of children” the target.
He said these concerns were brought to the Department of Education and Scott prior to his signing the bill.
Scott has become a popular target for lawsuits and this marks at least the eighth time he has been sued since taking office.
“This isn’t the first time Gov. Scott has been inappropriately added to a lawsuit where he’s not a proper defendant. It’s all just a ploy to get a splash in the media and any good lawyer would know better,” said Scott spokesman Lane Wright.
School districts can appoint a teacher or district curriculum specialist to review the recommendations by the reviewers. Ultimately, school districts must spend 50 percent of their textbook budgets on state-approved books.
In May, the Department of Education explained the change as a way of curing some problems with the existing adoption process. Mary Jane Tappen, who is in charge of curriculum for the department, said it had become difficult to find people to sit on the committees since it is a huge undertaking.
“We felt like going to a review process where first experts review the content to ensure it is error-free and factual, followed by every district in the state participating in a second review,” Tappen said.
The Department of Education said it has yet to select new textbook reviewers under the new law.
“We’re still in the process of getting volunteer experts from the universities, state colleges, national organizations other state agency social studies program specialists and private university systems,” said department spokeswoman Cheryl Etters. The next textbooks up for adoption are K-12 social studies books.
It’s not just groups like Citizens for National Security that are concerned about the new adoption process.
Teachers and school board members who had previously sat on the statewide adoption committees also sounded alarms earlier this year when the Legislature first passed the bill that made the changes.
“We are going to see what happened in Texas, with curriculum being challenged and changed,” said April Griffin, a school board member from Hillsborough County Schools, in a May interview with the News Service of Florida. “We are going to see favoritism for certain companies. I think we are going to lose the voice of the front lines in this process.”
By The News Service of Florida
Comments
13 Responses to “Group Plans Lawsuit Over Florida Textbook Adoption Changes”
Naw, the willingness to let others be wrong even if you never are.
Tolerance: The virtue of believing in nothing!
when you let one religion into school the door remains open for the rest to follow.
we must also remember that satainism is a recognized religion.
just saying you should be careful what you wish for.
My opinion is that if some of the Textbooks “embrace or embellish” Islamic values, then they are not appropiate in our classrooms . Textbooks, especially those of Religion, must present an objective view of any religion. Textbooks are suppose to inform, educate, present religion the way it is informative, with not intentions to influence children’s minds.
In regards to groups selecting all textbooks, I believe that it is better to have a small group of people, let’s say, experts on religion or social studies volunteers, rather than a big group of citizens that would be reviewing publicly some school’s books, just to fill a political agenda and not having any knowledge on the subject.
School districts can select their own experts to avoid undemocratic criticism but reviewing books must be done by people who know about different religions and know the differences between educational purposes versus indoctrination of our children.
Yes indeed, we must be extremely careful with all Islamic teachings because from the Koran teachings and the fundamental extremists , according to their own book, there is not much a define line of certainty. We’ll be allowing the teaching of a religion that has a double meaning at the core of their own book of Islamic teachings. Furthermore, we’ll be allowing indoctrination of our own children in our own backyard and at the cost of our own taxpayers.
I agree with a small group of educated people to review textbooks in our school’s system.
to MMM…..there has been prayer in schools in the last 45 yrs. Where did you get that idea?…
I agree that it definately should be taught at home more than anywhere else, but nothing wrong with letting the ones who believe have prayer in school. Why should the ones who don’t want it dictate to the ones who do. It shouldn’t be all about the ones who don’t want it…
You are right Lulu…
so Governor Scott is secretly a Muslim?
whodathunk?
REGARDING:
“(Have you ever read the Southern Baptist Conventions bylaws? ”
http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/legal/bylaws.asp” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/legal/bylaws.asp
The Bylaws govern how the Convention will conduct business while the messengers are convened. The Convention has no power over the churches. The messengers have no power other than to carry message, speak for their individual churches.
How does that translate into Shariia law? Have they started lopping off hands and ordering gang rape of relatives while I wasn’t looking?
David a baptist not in SBC but familiar
When the collaspe comes, this will be so very easy to sort out. I am a Babtist MMM and I do not want to attack you. I can tell by your comments, that moving here has been difficult for you. America is a large nation, when it is divided up, I am sure there will be a place for non belivers and a place for those who love the lord.
Nice comments, except that you are all worked up about nothing. At least based on the story. The Citizens for National Security offer no examples of this being true. I am more worried about Baptists trying to shove there weird and almost Shariac beliefs down the throats of my childrens. (Have you ever read the Southern Babptist Conventions bylaws? How about the John Brch Society) And before you go trying to attack me as a liberla or heathen, all three of my children attended a private religous school through 8th grade and then moved into the public school system. Want to teach religion to students? Teach them at religon HOME and church, and/or send them to a private institution. And there hasn’t been prayer in schools at least 45 years and even then it was not taught in most public schools.
@ huh…Funny how liberals DON”T WANT religion in schools, unless of course, it’s islam.
I have a solution. A bible for christians, a talmud for jews and a koran for the muslims. I feel textbooks should state scientific fact, doctrine is for parents to teach.
“We need more people, not less, engaged in that task,” Silver said.
Absolutely! Three people who may or may not even know what they are doing should not be allowed to be the deciding factor for our students’ textbooks.
Funny how everyone wants religion in schools until Islam is brought up. Its almost as if they just want their own personal religion taught in schools hummm