Florida education commissioner says states need to be more ‘aggressive’ with policies and get back to basics

Reacting to Florida ranking number one in the latest Educational Freedom Index report, state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. told Fox News Digital that the Sunshine State has become a model for paving the path to educational freedom.

“I think aggressive policies need to be applied to get our institutions back to fulfilling their mission. Students need to be in school learning and all those other things, whether it’s gender or ideology,” Díaz Jr. told Fox News Digital.

The commissioner added that “many states are imitating or taking” what they have done in Florida and implementing it.

“We need to remove all this noise from school and we need to get back to the basics of teaching reading… They need to learn to read, so they can read to learn. And teach math and acquire the basics. Civics “It’s been incredibly important here in Florida. If you get the basics right, everything else starts to fall into place, but you have to filter and make sure you get rid of the distractions that have been going on in these schools for a long time,” he said. “

Díaz Jr. further explained that teachers unions have been a “major obstacle” to educational freedom because they have “often gone from worrying about teachers’ pay, benefits, and working conditions to addressing these social issues.”

“What they should be concerned about is how do we improve reading scores, how do we improve math scores and how do we get our teachers in the best working conditions,” he said.

The Center for Educational Reform Parent Power Index Report describes how educational programs and policies enable parental involvement in education. CER notes that the effort was “driven” by post-pandemic educational concerns and a “renewed understanding of the power of educational freedom.”

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According to the report, between 2021 and April 2024, 26 education reform laws were instituted to enshrine parental rights and involvement.

“One of the essential things that I think has driven the fathers’ rights movement in Florida is actually COVID, because while the foundations of this movement existed… there weren’t enough parents paying attention, at the time when the school temporarily came to their dining room, they realized what was happening in the classroom,” Díaz said.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, and their three children. (Team DeSantis)

CER report ranks the five best and worst states in terms of their efforts to boost educational freedom laws.

Arizona, Florida and North Carolina were three of the top five states in the “Parental Power Index,” states that saw the largest influx of people moving during the three-year period. CER added that these states’ policies resulted in more than one million students leaving “public schools to pursue other educational opportunities in states that have a political environment that allows for choice for parents.”

According to the index, Florida was the state with the most educational freedom because the state “took serious accountability measures” for education officials.

Florida rose to first place in another ranking in academics. US News & World Report published a Ranking of the best states for education showing Florida ranked number one for the second year in a row.

“That placement is largely driven by several stellar metrics in higher education, and less by Florida’s still fairly strong K-12 performance,” US News & World Report said.

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The report stated that “in metrics reflecting kindergarten through high school, Florida performed the most in college readiness.”

Diaz Jr. said the DeSantis administration is going to make an effort to ensure that teachers don’t push “nonsense” in classrooms.

“What we found is that, again, some of this nonsense has crept in there and instead of worrying about the science of reading and how we teach math and how to deliver instruction, we were talking about creating social, justice and oppressor activists versus the oppressed, the same and gender ideology,” he stated. “And that’s why we need to focus, as the governor says, we need to refocus on the basics and the basics and get our students back.”

DeSantis has made it a priority to remove “woke” elements from state schools. Since taking office, he enacted a Parents’ Bill of Rights to ban teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation and took steps to enforce laws banning pornographic material in schoolchildren, such as LGBTQ books with sexual content. graphic.

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from the COVID-19 pandemic, parents have taken a closer look at what is happening in their children’s schools, causing many to speak out against certain books and curricula being taught. Critics argue that these parents are censoring children and pushing to erase LGBTQ and other minority identities from schools.