>>This week on NewsNight, the Florida Board of Governors is set to take up a role restricting diversity in social activism programs on state university campuses.

Plus, a new, tougher scoring system for standardized tests in Florida's public schools.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, and welcome to NewsNight, where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in central Florida and how they affect all of us.

The Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state's public university system, will vote soon on its rule implementing Florida's so-called bathroom law.

It requires people to use restrooms that align with their gender assigned at birth or use gender neutral restrooms.

Staff that violate the rule will face disciplinary procedures up to and including dismissal.

Meanwhile, the board will also take up a separate proposed rule designed to implement another state law during a meeting next week to be held at UCF.

This one restricting spending on diversity programs on campuses.

The rules contained in the three page long document include a ban on state universities or their affiliates spending state or federal funds to promote, support or maintain any programs or campus activities constituting government speech that advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, promote or engage in political or social activism.

Violate the Florida Educational Equity Act.

That law bars discrimination in K through 12 and state higher education institutions on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or marital status.

The draft also defines political or social activism as any activity organized with a purpose of effecting or preventing change to a government policy action or function, or any activity intended to achieve a desired result related to social issues where the university endorses or promotes a position in communications advertisements, programs or campus activities.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio this week, Leslie Postal writes about education for the Orlando Sentinel.

Thanks so much for coming in, Leslie.

Really appreciate your time.

Beth Kassab, editor of the Winter Park Voice, thank you for being here as well.

>>Thanks, Steve.

>>Good to see you guys here today.

Let me start with you, Leslie, on this one and these new rules from the board of governors that'll be taken up next week on DEI programs, First of all.

Remind us what the underlying legislation S.B.

266 does broadly.

>>Yes, it's the same does the same sort of thing.

The rules we're talking about, it bans funding for DEI programs, which is diversity, equity and inclusion and also those political and social activism.

You know, it was part of the governor's effort to stop woke and not allow-- >>Sort of solidify that.

>>Yes.

And now the governor board of governors has to make the rules so that the universities actually know specifically what they can and cannot do.

But it all stems from that legislation.

>>And I think it's federal and state funding.

Interestingly, Beth the faculty union says this Board of Governors draft goes further than the legislation itself.

What has been the main pushback from critics here?

>>You know, they're really worried about free speech issues.

They're worried about not being able to give students any commentary on events or offer different perspectives.

This really is being perceived as a crackdown on free thinking and thought that might be somehow in dispute with the state government.

>>That's interesting what you mentioned there about commentary, because that's often something that academics do.

They talk to us about issues, for example, commentating on events that are going on in the news.

Politics for example.

>>Yeah, I mean, it's really critical to education, right?

The idea to have this free exchange of ideas and and to be able to change each other's minds, change your own mind.

That really can't happen without without those types of discussions.

And and it goes even further than that because the legislation and the draft rules seem to prohibit even categorization of people by race or sex or other categories.

There's some academics and scientists have expressed concern that some of the research will be stopped, you know, potentially life saving research into breast cancer or other diseases that might only affect women or the social problems that might only affect certain groups.

And this is in a state that has for many years really strived to improve the research programing and reputation at its public universities.

>>And I just also wanted to add, you know, with focusing on the DEI things, I mean, there's also a concern that those were efforts to make sure that our universities offered a place for, you know, a group that represented our state and that people who were maybe less able to succeed in college were given a leg up and or some help to make sure that they could, you know, kind of.

And so I think there's a concern that those those efforts will be will be hurt as well.

>>Right.

I think at the very core, for many years, the state worked really diligently to make sure that we could, you know, stamp out discrimination when it came to higher education.

We all know there's a long legacy of people being favored for various types of privilege.

Right.

So there were a lot of efforts to try to even the playing field, >>Diversify the student pool, right?

>>Right.

And there has there have been some successes on that front.

This is really a law, though, that instead of instead of laws to end discrimination, this is a law to stop people from just simply talking about discrimination.

>>I'm just kind of interested in some of the challenges to the law itself to S.B.

266.

This is being challenged in court by a group at New College, which of course is not a stranger to public attention these days.

What are the plaintiffs asking for there?

>>They've really been at the forefront of a lot of these debates.

And there's a group of students and faculty there who are asking for a judge to prohibit the state from being able to enforce parts of this law.

>>Yeah.

>>There are there's pushback from those in support of the law who are saying, hey, you know, the board of governors hasn't even adopted the rules yet.

It's too early for this challenge.

So that's that's playing out in court.

>>I mean, I guess a lot of universities have been saying we've just been waiting for these.

>>Right.

I mean, they have to follow the rules and they know these were coming.

My guess is they may have been weighing in, you know, quietly with whoever their contacts were at the board staff to to direct them.

But, you know, they must follow these rules once they're once they're approved.

So that's going to be the way it is.

>>As you mentioned before, I mean, SB 266 was sort of designed to cement those principles in the “Stop Woke Act ” from from the prior year, which also applies to K through 12.

And I just wanted to ask you, since K through 12 is one of the things that you're deep in the weeds on since that Stop Woke Act came into effect, I guess about a year and a half ago.

How has it been playing out in classrooms at that level, would you say?

>>You know, I think there's been some concern, but again, I don't think a lot of what the law intended to address was really there.

>>Yeah.

You know, I mean, most public schools would have said, you know, we're not teaching that one race is better than the other or-- >>Critical race theory.

>>I mean, we weren't teaching critical race theory anyway.

And even when the governor first moved to ban it, you know, the examples he cited weren't from Florida.

I think one, he cited an example.

Something happened in an Arizona school and I can't remember the other maybe in Pennsylvania.

So I don't think there was really a lot of that critical race theory discussion happening in K-12 schools.

But there have been little things.

I mean, you might remember in Duval County, you know, they pulled books on Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron because they were worried that those somehow because they talked about the discrimination both of those baseball stars faced as children, you know, growing up and as adults, that those wouldn't be allowed.

Now, the state ended up saying you're being silly and they put the books back.

But I think that's an example of people are nervous.

>>Just concern.

>>Yes, people are nervous.

>>Maybe a lack of clarity.

I want to talk about books a little a little bit later.

Just finally in this segment, Beth, I mean, Governor DeSantis recently appointed several DEI skeptics to the board of Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland, and we're looking potentially at a New College type situation there as well.

Do you think?

>>Two of the people that who he appointed to that board are people who, if you will, kind of specialize in challenging DEI and they don't even live here in the state of Florida.

We're seeing a very different makeup of these university boards than we have in the past.

These are not people who seem to be, at their core, wanting to defend the university and support its mission.

I think we're seeing more and more examples of people being appointed to these boards to defend the agenda of a governor.

>>Really interesting time in higher education, no doubt about it.

A lot of a lot of controversy, a lot of flux.

You can find a link to the text of the draft regulation from the Board of Governors on DEI expenditures, along with a link to the legislation itself signed into law by Governor DeSantis that both on our website.

So you can compare them for yourself.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

All right.

I want to switch gears to talk about K through 12 schools, which have also been dealing with significant changes in recent years in Florida, as we just mentioned.

The state Board of Education, which oversees schools and colleges, has passed similar rules as the Board of Governors on things like bathroom use and recently expanded those rules to private institutions as well.

But it's also taken several other key steps of late.

At a recent meeting, the board voted unanimously to adopt a new scoring system for required state tests, which could make it tougher for students to pass.

>>The bar that is being set today is more rigorous than where the bar was set on the previous assessment, the FSA.

Setting a more rigorous bar on a new assessment which is aligned to more rigorous contents standards, is consistent with the decisions made each time Florida has transitioned to new content standards and new assessments over the past 20 years.

So, for example, in grades three through ten English language arts, between 47% and 52%, depending on the grade level of students would have scored on grade level.

If these proposed cut scores have been in place last spring for comparison purposes, during the last administration of the FSA in 2022, these percentages range from 48% to 57%.

So that's an example of the bar being set.

Fewer students would meet that bar.

That's a reflection of the bar being more rigorous.

>>Juan Copa there.

Okay, Leslie, let me start with you on this one.

Firstly, this new scoring system is Florida's new standardized test, right, that replaced the FSA last year.

How do those test themselves differ?

Significant difference?

>>The big one is that this test is called progress monitoring.

So students take three tests over the course of the year.

The first two are kind of shorter.

The third one is the high stakes one.

Students need to pass to graduate and-- >>Graduation.

>>To get promoted to fourth grade and those kind of thing.

>>Just I mean, how is the new scoring system then different from the ones used in the FSA test?

I mean, what makes it more rigorous?

Okay.

So basically it's the same sort of scoring system.

It's a five level.

If you remember, even way back in FCAT, you know, you wanted to get a kid at least to get a three to be passing.

So that's all the same.

It's just that they set the so-called cut score between passing and not passing a little bit higher.

So looking at how kids did last year, they said if this system were in place, you know, a smaller percentage of kids would have passed.

So we don't know how kids are going to do going forward, but taking the new system and imposing it on last year's performance, fewer kids would have.

>>And the state makes those estimates about how.

>>Right.

I mean, the state and the states decided to set the scores in a way that that's because they want it to be a little bit harder.

>>So why did they do that then, Beth?

I mean, the education commissioner, Manny Diaz, has called it a sort of a reasonable and measured approach to raising the bar.

Why do proponents think the bar has to be raised from from year to year?

>>All right.

Well, going back over the long history of school account accountability in Florida, the idea was always to slowly raise the bar.

Kids would rise to the occasion.

Teachers would rise to the occasion.

And the theory was, over time, Florida kids become so much more competitive nationally and globally.

We're holding them to higher standards.

They're doing more and they're ready to go out in the world and do big things.

That's the whole point.

However, the testing has been a big reason parents have pulled kids out of school.

>>Okay.

>>And I think when you're raising the standards and you're not giving schools the resources to handle those standards or to meet the newest challenges, you're just creating a problem that can't be solved.

Right.

So Leslie has written about sustained, you know, retention amongst teachers.

So we're raising the standards at a time when we can't even keep teachers in the classrooms.

You wonder, well, how is that going to play out?

Are we are we setting up kids to fail?

>>Well, what do you think?

I mean, we've heard a lot about teacher retention.

>>I mean, I think I think what Beth said is what you will hear critics of standardized testing say for sure.

I think, you know, if you look back starting, I guess the testing really started with Governor Chiles, but it really went into high gear with Governor Bush.

>>Governor Bush, yeah.

>>You know, Florida students did make really strong gains on elementary reading and and they still performed better than students across the many students across the country in elementary reading.

But what we saw recently, math nationally and in Florida just collapsed.

I mean, COVID and being online just killed kids math skills, I mean, really terribly.

So I think kids are struggling in math right now.

And upper level reading has not had those same success.

So now we have somewhat higher standards, plus all the problems with the pandemic.

So I think I think there is going to be an issue with how well how many kids may struggle to meet the bar going forward.

And the first like for high school graduation.

It's this year's 10th graders.

So class of 2026 is when we'll start to see.

>>And if you look at, you know, funding, you know, the differences, the amount of money that we're now putting into private voucher schools that have no accountability standards, there's a huge disconnect in holding public school students to a standard that is being funded at a much, you know, just far less than it once was when we started seeing all of those important and really excellent gains back after the the initial Bush years.

>>There was certainly a move to really embrace those standardized tests under both Governor Bush and President Bush, as you remember, at the national level as well.

So there has been a history, then, Leslie, of changing the sort of scoring models in this state when the state changes at standardized tests.

>>Yes.

I mean, this and this needed to happen.

You know, you can't you can't score a new test by an old and old system.

So they they needed to do it.

They didn't need to make it what they assumed to be harder.

But they did need to come up with a system that fit with this test.

>>Let me move on to talk about charter schools.

And this was something else interesting that the Board of Education has done.

Firstly, it approved a statewide body that's going to have the power to approve charter schools.

I always thought that school boards can do that right.

Also, universities, I think, can do that for affiliates.

Why do education officials think there should be an alternative venue for approving these charter schools?

>>I think they said they wanted like charter school management companies that want to open campuses in several places to have sort of a one stop shop rather than having to file with the Orange County School board and the Seminole County School board.

And, you know, that seemed to be the reason.

I think probably they also want to make sure that they have a board in place that will easily approve them.

And maybe they think some school boards aren't as charter friendly, although, I mean, I think there's more than 40 charter schools in Orange County.

The last time I checked.

So I think most school boards have been pretty willing to apply to approve schools as long as they seem like they're going to do a decent job.

But it's certainly if the state is approving who's on that commission, it certainly may make an easier glide path for some charter schools to just go that route and-- >>Some charter schools.

>>Not have to deal with a school board that maybe will ask some tougher questions about their curriculum and their budget and their plans.

>>The other thing I wanted to talk about and you mentioned books before you wrote a piece last month about the results of that 2020 law that sort of gives parents more power to review books.

It also gives guidance, I think, to school librarians as well.

How does Florida shape up right now compared to other states which have imposed sort of similar pieces of legislation in terms of how many books have been removed from shelves?

>>Oh were the leader.

So Pen America says, no, no schools, nobody has banned more books than Florida schools in the last school year, I think 40% of all the bans nationally came from Florida.

>>I wonder why that is?

I think it's the laws.

I mean, I think the laws have given parents who want to object a pretty easy way to do it.

>>And parental rights has been has been a big mantra of this governor and pretty much all his educational policies.

>>Right.

And also that law from I guess it was 2022, said that once one district bans a book, we're going to put it on a state report and we want all the other districts to look at it.

So now we're seeing, you know, Seminole got rid of books.

No one in Seminole County had objected to the books, but they were on the list.

So and I just got a report, Volusia County also looking at those books and now removing books.

So, again, they're not necessarily coming from their community, but they're on a state list.

So other people, other districts are thinking, well, if this other district did it, maybe we should too.

>>Maybe we should do it.

>>And most of the book bans are coming from Clay County.

So now you have, you know, one small North Florida school district is, in a way dictating what's happening in 66 other school districts.

>>And Steve, you know, I just think we can't get out of this conversation without pointing out the hypocrisy here, because what we hear from this administration when it comes to schools on many levels is that everything's all about parent choice.

Everything's all about individuality, making the choice that is best for your individual family.

But when it comes to a lot of these policies, removing books from libraries, charter school approval, it's now become a one stop shop.

We're going to do the one thing for the entire state, and that is at complete odds with the message we usually hear, which is everything has to be highly individualized.

And I just think it's important to point that out.

We're being sold two different versions of what's best here.

>>Well we'd like to hear from you on the subjects we're discussing on the program today.

Be sure to join the conversation on social media.

We're at WUCFTV on Facebook, X, and Instagram.

All right.

Finally tonight, Governor DeSantis this week defended the decision to order the deactivation of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters.

The governor says recent campus events violate Florida laws on anti-Semitism and amount to providing “material support to terrorism, ” accusing demonstrators of linking themselves to Hamas.

We discussed this issue on last week's program.

But before we talk about the latest, let's hear from two Florida lawmakers.

First, Democratic state Representative Anna Eskamani, who's been critical of the move on First Amendment grounds.

>>I see serious first amendment violations.

I mean, first of all, we have to remember that an academic setting freedom of speech is supreme.

And academics are a space for people of diverging viewpoints.

Should have discussions, should have debate, should express themselves and learn from one another.

>>But support for terrorism?

>>The claim that students are supporting terrorism is incredibly inflated and dangerous.

I mean, these are students that are expressing a position that is centered on humanitarian need.

And again, there are students on college campuses who also express positions that I don't support.

You have organizations like Turning Point USA on our college campuses who say trans people don't exist.

Some may say that that is supporting terrorism.

If you think a group of people shouldn't exist and support policies that are ending their lives.

So at the end of the day, we can go back and forth and have a debate over what speech you find likable, what speech you agree with.

But the end of the day, when it's student fees that sue organizations are based upon students decide how those dollars are spent and on a public university.

When we begin to pick and choose what speech we like and don't like, that is a slippery slope.

>>Anna Eskamani that.

Now let's hear from Republican Representative Randy Fine.

He wrote an open letter to Governor DeSantis to urge stronger enforcement of Florida's laws on anti-Semitism.

>>The letter asked him to use the laws that we have already passed to protect the people of Florida and and they're not - one of the laws has never been used at all.

And so I did I get a response?

I did not.

I did.

I did see a statement in the in the media, but they never responded.

If you walked through a college campus, if you walked through UCF saying, let's hang all the N-words from a tree.

I would like to believe you'd be gone in 60 seconds.

But somehow when it's gas the Jews.

Well, we need to talk about free speech.

And so we have a law in Florida that says it all should be treated the same.

And I just don't understand why that law is not being enforced.

>>Representative Randy Fine, there.

Okay Beth let's start with you on this one.

I mean, the issue has caused significant divisions on campuses since this war broke out, not only about the war itself, but also how leaders of those institutions have responded broadly in line with with state leaders.

>>Yes.

So I certainly we've seen a handful of university presidents send out emails to students, staff their constituencies, saying that they they obviously stand with Israel and condemn terrorism.

And there has been some pushback from Palestinian students who have said that wasn't that those responses were not compassionate enough to people who are losing their lives in Gaza.

>>This is, in a way, largely kind of these frustrations that we're seeing on campuses really do seem to be kind of a a microcosm of what we're seeing more broadly in the nation, particularly here in Florida.

>>This is one of those issues where I think people have obviously very strong views.

I mean, both things can be true, right?

I mean, people can express support for Israel and condemnation of anti-Semitism, but also feel heartbroken about what's happening in Gaza to civilians.

I mean, people can hold multiple views on some of these things.

But I think our political discourse doesn't really allow for a lot of that.

So, you know, and I guess for universities, there is a fine line between, you know, is someone just expressing their right to share their views and publicly state them or they inciting violence and, you know, saying specifically I want to kill someone.

And there's different there's different types of speech as well.

>>And different laws that apply.

>>And different laws, right.

>>Beth, there has been, as we heard from Representative Eskamani there, a pushback from sort of Free Speech Act activists on that move to sort of deactivate those Students for Justice in Palestine chapters.

How do they argue that educational institutions should allow those pro-Palestine demonstrations, even when Jewish students may feel threatened?

>>So in that in the case of that particular student group, the governor and others in the state are arguing that the language coming out of that organization was more than it crossed a line from expressing.

I think the word was solidarity with people in Gaza to actually supporting-- >>Material support is what the governor said.

>>Right the so-called movement.

So so that they're drawing that distinction and of course, like you just heard from Representative Eskamani, people are saying, look, that that is being absolutely misconstrued.

That was not the intent of the statement, but that is the argument being made, is that in some cases, particular groups are aiding terrorism, which is against the law versus expressing a viewpoint.

>>Right.

>>And supporting humanitarian causes.

>>Yes.

And that is something we heard from the governor this week when he was talking to to Jewish leaders in the state.

It's an issue we'll keep watching here on the program.

A reminder, you can find much more on the stories we've discussed tonight, plus past episodes of NewsNight on our website.

Visit us online at wucf.org/newsnight along the bottom of your screen.

That is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Leslie Postal writes about education for the Orlando Sentinel.

Thanks so much for coming in, Leslie.

>>Thanks for having me.

>>Appreciate it.

Beth Kassab from The Winter Voice.

Good to see you Beth.

>>Good to see you.

Thank you.

>>We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.