It may be under a new name, the Florida Standards, but new math and language standards being adopted by Florida are based on Common Core standards being adopted by dozens of states nationally.
That isn't making Common Core opponents happy -- so now they are taking aim at the company Florida has chosen to create new accountability tests for Florida students.
In a letter the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition accuses the American Institutes for Research -- AIR -- of promoting a homosexual lifestyle to children.
Specifically, Stop Common Core said that for educational testing, Florida "has chosen a company that has a significant history of promoting identification of the GLBT lifestyle for children as young as seven years old."
"We labeled that one half-true," said Josh Gillin of PolitiFact. "AIR does a lot of different things for a lot of different places. They provide all sorts of health and workplace research on bullying and substance abuse. And one of the issues that they have studied and developed research on was, in fact, LGBT issues for children, youth or families. But they're not an advocacy group. It's just straight research."
Research, PolitiFact learned, is given only to those organizations who request it.
"That's right," Gillin said. "It's to help kids dealing with this."
And does any of AIM's LGBT research show up in its testing?
"Not at all," said Gillin.
