TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – On Thursday, Florida’s Board of Education adopted a new set of principles as part of what’s been dubbed the “Phoenix Declaration,” becoming the first state in the nation to do so.
In a release, FDOE officials said that the declaration — which comes courtesy of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — will serve as a guiding set of principles for education in the state.
“Throughout Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tenure, education in Florida has been guided by many of the principles embodied in the Phoenix Declaration,” Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said. “By formally adopting this declaration, we are reaffirming our commitment to an education system that pursues truth and virtue, empowers parents, and always prioritizes our students.”
The Heritage Foundation itself says that the principles laid out in the declaration are intended to imbue students with “personal and civic virtues” to help them succeed and be better members of their communities.
The FDOE lists out the new guiding principles as follows:
- Parental Choice and Responsibility — Parents are the primary educators of their children. Public education funds should always follow the child.
- Transparency and Accountability — Schools must be fully transparent with parents about curricula, policies, and student well-being.
- Truth and Goodness — Students deserve an education grounded in objective truth, free from ideological fads, and oriented toward the pursuit of the good.
- Cultural Transmission — Students should learn about America’s founding principles and roots in the broader Western and Judeo-Christian traditions. Students should study the best-competing viewpoints that comprise our intellectual heritage.
- Character Formation — Schools must prepare children for the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood by cultivating virtue, personal responsibility, and self-discipline.
- Academic Excellence — Schools should prioritize proven teaching methods and a content rich curriculum rooted in foundational subjects over fads or experimental teaching methods.
- Citizenship — Schools should teach students the civic virtues and knowledge necessary for self-government, including the value of civil disagreement. Students should learn the whole truth about America—its merits and failings—without obscuring that America is a great source of good in the world.
“I would genuinely feel as strongly frustrated... had it been a left leaning, a progressive political think tank,” said James Evans, a Seminole County School Board candidate and parent. “These are political institutions, and we have to recognize that.”
Evans, whose child attends Seminole County schools, raised concerns about how these standards would affect diverse student populations.
“Social morality could be very different between a Jewish family, a Christian family, a Muslim family and a Hindu family and every single one of those kids are in the same social studies class,” he noted.
Jason Bedrick of the Heritage Foundation addressed critics’ concerns head-on.
“I think it’s very telling that if you look at the critics of the Phoenix Declaration, all of them are basically saying the same thing. Yeah, everything in this document sounds good, but we think there’s this some other agenda going on, and what we think they want to do is to whitewash history. And so I want to be very clear that is not what we want to do,” Bedrick said.
According to Bedrick, the new standards aim to provide what he describes as a necessary course correction in education, which he believes has “gone too far to the left.”
When questioned about the declaration’s approach to science and rejection of what it terms “ideological fads,” Bedrick pointed to gender issues as an example.
“Well, I think one prominent example would be the trans movement, which is blurring the distinctions,” Bedrick said. “There are certain biological facts. Men and women are different.”
As Florida moves forward with implementing these new standards, parents and educators await details on how the Phoenix Declaration will be incorporated into a state education system that has already undergone substantial changes in recent years under Gov. DeSantis’ administration.