The release said the list of rejected books makes up approximately 41% of submissions, which is the most in Florida’s history.
Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to critical race theory, “inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the release states.
“Critical race theory is a practice. It’s an approach to grappling with a history of White supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” said KimberlĂ© Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and a law professor who teaches at UCLA and Columbia University.
Educators in multiple states have argued critical race theory is generally not included in grade school teaching.
According to the ban, instruction in schools must be “factual and objective.” It specifically prohibits “theories that distort historical events” — including “the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.”
Florida also banned teaching material from the 1619 Project, the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning project to reframe American history around the date of August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived on America’s shores.
The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an “alarming” 71% were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics, the release said.
Despite rejecting 41% of materials submitted, every core mathematics course and grade is covered with at least one textbook, the release said.
In a statement, DeSantis said he is grateful for the department’s thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.
“It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students,” the governor said.
CNN’s Leah Asmelash contributed to this report.