Florida Quietly Removes Climate Change Content from Textbooks

Florida's high school marine biology students would have learned about the devastating impact of climate change if they had read the original draft of their textbook. However, the content was altered to downplay the severity of the issue.

According to an investigation by WUSF and The Hechinger Report, Florida education officials asked science textbook publishers to make changes that either watered down or eliminated content about the climate crisis. The changes were made in the summer of 2024, and they were not required by the state science standards.

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, stated that demanding the treatment of climate change be weakened in these textbooks is very unusual. He emphasized that it's vital for today's students to learn about climate change because they will be tomorrow's workers, consumers, and voters.

The changes were made to textbooks published by McGraw Hill and Cengage. In McGraw Hill's Marine Science book, the term "climate change" was altered to "changes in the environment." The word "polluting" was also removed in front of "coal burning power plants" in an environmental science textbook by Cengage.

These changes were made without consulting the authors or peer-reviewed scientific studies. The authors of the textbooks were not informed about the edits, and they were not given the opportunity to review or approve the changes.

The investigation also found that Florida's updated science standards may not include education about climate change. State education officials did not respond to repeated questions on the topic.

The pushback against climate education in Florida is not limited to textbook negotiations. It's been happening out loud from high up the political food chain, including Governor Ron DeSantis, who officially removed references to climate change from state statutes in May 2024.

The changes to the textbooks are part of a broader trend of politics creeping into Florida classrooms under the DeSantis administration. Public school teachers are particularly vulnerable, and they are being told to refrain from discussing topics deemed "controversial" for their own benefit.

The educators described a "culture of caution," where they are not barred from mentioning climate change in the classroom outright, but rather told to refrain from discussing any topics deemed "controversial" for their own benefit.

When asked about the changes the Florida Department of Education asked for in the textbooks, press secretary Olivia Wester said that the department's review of instructional materials is guided by state law, State Board of Education rule, and Florida's academic standards and benchmarks.

A spokesperson for publisher Cengage said that the company works with state education agencies to align its textbooks to educational standards "while maintaining the quality and integrity of our content." They said Florida-specific editions "should not be assumed to reflect materials used in other states."

Tyler Reed, senior director of communications for McGraw Hill, said that it is "routine" for state departments of education to request changes based on local education requirements, and that the goal is to ensure that the accuracy, efficacy, and integrity of the curriculum pedagogy remains intact.

However, Michael Huber, an author of McGraw Hill's Marine Science, said that the changes made to the Florida version of the textbook were unsettling. He noted that the statistic about the 150,000 annual deaths due to climate change came from a World Health Organization publication, and that the edit distorted the message of the sentence.

**Climate Change in Textbooks**

| Publisher | Textbook | Changes Made | | --- | --- | --- | | McGraw Hill | Marine Science | Altered term "climate change" to "changes in the environment" | | Cengage | Environmental Science | Removed word "polluting" in front of "coal burning power plants" | | McGraw Hill | Marine Science | Cut reference to students at the University of Washington in Seattle voting to pay higher fees to help the school buy electricity from renewable energy sources |

The investigation also found that Florida education officials asked authors to provide sources for lines about the effects of human-caused climate change, like plant species flowering earlier than usual. The authors began doing something they had never done before: support specific statements in the text with references to peer-reviewed scientific studies.

The FDOE reviews new textbooks about every five years, and districts are financially incentivized - though not required - to adopt the state-approved textbooks. In 2023, it was science textbooks' turn for an update cycle, and in the summer of 2024, Florida released a list of textbooks it had approved and others it rejected. Publishers had the opportunity to revise the content of their books and reapply for approval.

A data analysis by WUSF and Hechinger looked at the list of science textbooks that state officials adopted right away and found that the textbooks most likely to have climate content - environmental science, earth science, and marine science - were adopted at less than half the rate of textbooks on other science subjects.