Octopus Overlords

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:31 amWhat does the College Board say:

David Coleman, the head of the College Board, said in an interview that the changes were all made for pedagogical reasons, not to bow to political pressure. “At the College Board, we can’t look to statements of political leaders,” he said. The changes, he said, came from “the input of professors” and “longstanding A.P. principles.”

I'm guessing that even if there's zero connection DeSantis (and his disciples) are going to campaign on how they forced this to happen.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:18 pm Did Coleman say this all with a straight face?

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 5:22 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:18 pm Did Coleman say this all with a straight face?

No shit. Did the person interviewing him even push back on that absurd comment?

Hey, everyone: This is pretty big. The Daily Caller (ugh) has memos from the Florida DOE suggesting they were influencing @CollegeBoard
on the AP African-American Studies curriculum as early as January 2022, and at the very minimum, July 2022. So, to everyone who somehow believed that College Board made its own, independent decisions about the framework/curriculum and wrapped it all up in December, 2022, before DeSantis went public: Read this.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:18 pm Did Coleman say this all with a straight face? Did anyone do any analysis of whether he was blinking S.O.S. while he was talking?

The College Board responded to the letter with one of its own, released on Thursday, saying that Florida’s concerns had not influenced any revisions to the course, which had been shaped instead by feedback from educators.

“We provide states and departments of Education across the country with the information they request for inclusion of courses within their systems,” the letter said, adding, “We need to clarify that no topics were removed because they lacked educational value. We believe all the topics listed in your letter have substantial educational value.”

...

The Florida letter suggests discrepancies with the College Board’s account of events. Florida publicly announced that it had rejected the A.P. course in January, a few weeks before the College Board released its final guidelines — too little time, the board said, to make any politically motivated revisions. But according to the letter, the state informed the College Board months before, in September 2022, that it would not add the African American Studies class to the state’s course directory without revisions.

The Florida letter also outlines a key Nov. 16 meeting to air differences between the state and the College Board over the course. In the meeting, the state claimed that the A.P. African American Studies course violated regulations requiring that “instruction on required topics must be factual and objective and may not suppress or distort significant historical events.”

According to the state, the College Board acknowledged that the course would undergo revisions, while pushing back against the state’s request to remove concepts like “systemic marginalization” and “intersectionality,” which the College Board saw as integral to the class.

Nevertheless, by the time the course’s final framework was released on Feb. 1, those terms had largely been removed, except that intersectionality was listed as an optional subject for the course’s required final project, in which students can choose their area of focus.

In its response to the Florida letter, the College Board said, “We are confident in the historical accuracy of every topic included in the pilot framework, as well as those now in the official framework.” The board has also said that students and teachers could still engage with ideas like intersectionality through optional lessons or projects and through A.P. Classroom, a free website that will serve as a repository for important texts for the class.

Even so, many scholars have noted the omission of terms that, according to the College Board’s own research documents, are considered central to African American Studies as it is taught on college campuses.

Florida lawmakers passed a bill Friday expanding a program used to fly migrants to Democratic-led cities and states. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration will now be able to relocate migrants elsewhere from any state in the country, not just from Florida.

The bill formally creates the Unauthorized Alien Transport Program, building out a program enacted by DeSantis last year that enabled government officials to fly migrants to destinations in blue states that have sanctuary policies in place.

The move suggests that DeSantis has no intention of shying away from the contentious methods his administration has used to deal with migrants. Conservative allies have pointed to the practice as a necessary tool to draw attention to the border crisis in the U.S. GOP state Rep. John Snyder also argued during floor debate on Thursday that the program was "humanitarian" because it offered a "free, chartered flight" for migrants who want to move elsewhere in the country.

The College Board is hitting back at top officials in Florida over the state's ban on a new AP African American Studies course that's being piloted in several states.

In a lengthy statement released Saturday, the national education nonprofit said it should have more quickly addressed claims by Florida's Department of Education that the course was indoctrinating students and lacked educational value, which the College Board called "slander."

The organization also said that Florida's public and private objections had no bearing on changes the College Board made to the final curriculum of the course, which it released earlier this month.

But I just went line-by-line through the DeSantis education bill. And you guys, it’s *bananas*. A road map for wrecking one of our great state systems of higher education. Breathtaking control of viewpoint and content throughout all academic activity in the entire Florida system. All colleges and universities are forbidden to spend any money to fund pedagogy, programming, or activities that “espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion.” No core class can present American history contrary to a founding narrative “based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”

To judge by several early polls, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has a decent shot of beating former President Donald Trump in the race to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Some liberals have pronounced this terrible news — because, they say, a DeSantis presidency would be just as awful as, and perhaps even worse than, a second Trump term.

This is wrong. A DeSantis presidency would be bad in many ways, and my fellow liberals should fight with all they have to prevent it. But Mr. DeSantis almost certainly would not be worse than Mr. Trump.


...

The case against Mr. DeSantis is rooted in his policy commitments. During his time as Florida’s chief executive, he has governed from the hard right, taking aggressive aim at voting rights, pursuing politicized prosecutions, restricting what can be taught in public schools and universities, strong-arming private businesses, using refugees as human props to score political points and engaging in flagrant demagogy about vaccines. Before that, as a congressman, he supported cuts to Social Security and Medicare and voted for a bill that would have severely weakened Obamacare. All of that provides ample reason to rally against him should he end up as the Republican nominee in 2024.

But none of it makes Mr. DeSantis worse than Mr. Trump, who also did and sought to do bad things in office: the Muslim travel ban, forcibly separating migrants from their children, and much else.

...

Could the Trump era have been worse? Absolutely, and here liberals have a point when they suggest Mr. Trump’s ability to wreak havoc was limited by his ineptness. Based on what we’ve seen of Mr. DeSantis’s performance as governor of Florida, a DeSantis administration would likely display much greater discipline and competence than what the country endured under Mr. Trump.

Yet it’s also the case that people in the Trump orbit recognize this problem and plan to ensure things work out differently next time. That includes ideas for bolder action on policy and much tighter and more focused management of the president, with an eye toward running an administration capable of acting much more shrewdly and ruthlessly than the last time.

So let’s stipulate that Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis would both try to do bad things in office. Mr. Trump still brings something distinctive and much more dangerous to the contest — or rather, several things. He’s flagrantly corrupt. He lies constantly. He’s impulsive and capricious. And he displays a lust for power combined with complete indifference to democratic laws and norms that constrain presidential power.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill that gives him control of Walt Disney World’s self-governing district, punishing the company over its opposition to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law.

The bill requires DeSantis, a Republican, to appoint a five-member board to oversee the government services that the Disney district provides in its sprawling theme park properties in Florida.

“Today the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” he said at a bill signing ceremony in Lake Buena Vista. “There’s a new sheriff in town, and accountability will be the order of the day.”

Octavious wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 3:13 pm I always thought it was odd how much power Disney had to rule their own area, but to give control to the state and allow him to appoint anyone he wants? What could go wrong?

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 3:42 pm Florida has to pay for it now too. It'll blow up in their face.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 3:46 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 3:42 pm Florida has to pay for it now too. It'll blow up in their face.

That;s what I wonder. What does this do to tax and service there?

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 4:34 pm I think it's a reasonable argument as to whether, from a liberal perspective, a second Trump term or a DeSantis administration would be worse. Also pretty academic, since they would both be really, really bad, and no liberal should consider supporting either.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 5:13 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 4:34 pm I think it's a reasonable argument as to whether, from a liberal perspective, a second Trump term or a DeSantis administration would be worse. Also pretty academic, since they would both be really, really bad, and no liberal should consider supporting either.

Right. Still it seems like the entire point of the piece was to impose a radical centrist framework on that sort of discourse. With the usual gate keeping about what serious discussion is and who and how it should be practiced.

Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 11:46 pm But Trump is somehow being controlled by Putin. Isn't that going to make him more dangerous?

Or do you think DeSantis is also belong to Putin?

Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 11:46 pm But Trump is somehow being controlled by Putin. Isn't that going to make him more dangerous?

Or do you think DeSantis is also belong to Putin?

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 4:20 pm

Trump isn't controlled by Putin. It's more that Trump is aligned with Putin, because Putin is happy to help Trump amass power and to be as corrupt as he wants to be.