Asked about College Board, Rick Scott suggests he supports Ron DeSantis ‘holding them accountable’

Image via AP.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott is weighing in on the state’s emergent battle with the College Board, saying he believes there is a state role in “holding them accountable.”

Scott’s comments, made during an interview with WIOD of Fort Lauderdale, responded to a question about whether there should be a “national standard” or a “state-by-state” decision on such matters.

“I think we ought to push these decisions down to the most local level we can. So there’s things that the federal government ought to be involved in. But the reality is … state government’s closer to you than federal government, local government’s closer to you than state government,” Scott said.

“I think since these universities were created by the state, I think they’re the ones that ought to be holding them accountable and they shouldn’t be woke.”

The comments sidestepped either overt endorsement or condemnation of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ stated desire to “reevaluate” the role of the organization that runs Advanced Placement tests and the Scholastic Aptitude Test, as Scott pivoted to more familiar talking points.

Scott added that when he attended school, it was “to get a job, to learn something, to be prepared for a job, not to be … indoctrinated.”

“And so that’s what our schools need to be doing,” Scott continued. “Just teach people how to … get ahead in life. You don’t need to say, ‘Oh gosh, if you’re this color, you’re bad. If you’re this color, you’re good.’ I mean, this is crazy. First of all, I don’t think government ought to be asking us our skin color on any forms. Let’s get back to, let’s judge people by their character, not by the color of their skin. This is crazy.”

The College Board, of course, is a non-governmental organization that DeSantis charged was trying to “jam its agenda down our throats” during a press conference Monday. As has been widely reported, the Governor takes umbrage with an African American Studies Advanced Placement course proposal rolled out by the previously uncontroversial College Board earlier this year.

“The College Board was the one that in a Black Studies course put queer theory in. Not us! They did that. They were the ones who put in Intersectionality. They put in other types of neo-Marxism into the proposed syllabus,” DeSantis contended, supporting his desire to “re-evaluate” the long-standing relationship between the state’s educational institutions and the board.

“They provided these AP courses for a long time, but you know, there are probably some other vendors who may be able to do that job as good or even a lot better,” DeSantis argued, noting that he “talked” to House Speaker Paul Renner about legislative moves to “re-evaluate how Florida’s doing that.”

The College Board condemned the state’s rejection of its initially proposed Black Studies course as lacking “educational value” in a letter made public over the weekend. The Board said the state’s critiques were “absent of substance.”

“In the discussion, they did not offer feedback but instead asked vague, uninformed questions like, ‘What does the word “intersectionality” mean?’ and ‘Does the course promote Black Panther thinking?’”

“We have made the mistake of treating (the Florida Department of Education) with the courtesy we always accord to an education agency, but they have instead exploited this courtesy for their political agenda,” the College Board contended.