Thread by @jzfriedman

The movement for school "transparency" (aka, teacher surveillance) notched TWO victories in FL this wk.

One bill mandates public websites to search all books/instructional materials used in K-12 schools.

The other does the same for public #highered.
#EdScare 🧵

The K-12 bill (HB1467) mandates public websites to search all books and instructional materials used in schools -- meaning: anything & everything students might see: textbooks, reading lists, manipulatives, electronic media, learning laboratories... wtsp.com/article/news/p…

But the higher ed bill (SB7044) is similar! Others have focused on how it threatens tenure & accreditation.

But it *also* directs all FL colleges & universities to create public searchable websites listing ALL instructional materials for ALL courses. 👀tampabay.com/news/education…

Colleges have to list all "educational materials for use within a course"

List must be:
- downloadable by current & prospective students
- available for 5 yrs
- searchable by prof, course title, & author and title of instructional materials
- listed 45 days before term starts

If signed by DeSantis, the bill will make it possible to publicly scrutinize every book taught by every professor in FL. That these must be "searchable" lists is an open invitation to look for who's teaching Marx! 1619 Project! CRT!

Are FL colleges ready to defend against this?

The argument will be that transparency is a good thing (which, it is) so what are faculty afraid of showing? But the bills are obviously extreme, burdensome, unrealistic. Clearly driven by an effort to intimidate teachers and professors, and censor what they teach.

And of course, making searchable lists of books says nothing about why a text is taught in an academic course, or how. Lists like this will be abused, becoming a means to target and harass faculty, impose politics over academic freedom.

I wrote last month about how the transparency movement would allow microscopic scrutiny of K-12 teachers, but clearly the same motives undergird this higher ed bill. In FL, this comes alongside last year's law allowing students to record their profs. 🙄thedailybeast.com/big-brother-is…

Oh and BTW this hasn't been thought through at all by the right, b/c it could just as easily be weaponized by the left. Ppl questioning ALL professors' instructional choices all the time? I don't see how this doesn't facilitate a great deal *more* turmoil on campus.