Major Textbook Publisher Caught Spreading LGBTQ and DEI Ideology in Schools

“Pretty disgusting” and “grotesque.” That’s how a Florida parent described an online session for students on “gender” provided by two K-12 virtual public schools in November—a session that virtual school officials held without first informing parents.

This schools’ attempt to sidestep families is just the latest in a long list of examples demonstrating that some educators and academic publishers will simply go around parents to push lewd content on K-12 students.

Yet this particular incident has implications for local, state, and even federal policymakers.

Connections Academy and Pearson Online Academy, online public schools managed by the U.K.-based Pearson publishing company, offered the online programing as an optional “Pride Snack and Chat” for students last month. Yet the session was not listed on the online calendars parents use to track student activities and assignments, and a parent told a Florida news station that the “chat” was a surprise.

The session’s instructors described terms such as “sexually fluid abrosexual,” “masexual,” and “syndemisexual,” to name a few. Presenters displayed a slideshow to students during the chat that also promoted organizations such as GLSEN, a group that promotes LGBT issues in K-12 schools, and The Trevor Project, an organization that hosts a website connecting adults with minor-age children for discussions on everything from chest binders to puberty blockers to explicit sex acts.

Considering Pearson’s record, the surprise “Snack and Chat” should come as anything but a shock.

Pearson is the world’s fourth-largest textbook publisher by revenue and operates the virtual K-12 schools known as Connections Academies, which have locations around the country. Pearson also has a history of advocating for school materials that include discussions of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI; “antiracism;” and gender issues.

In 2023, Pearson officials scrubbed their website after a Heritage Foundation investigation exposed their radical content. The company had published editorial guidelines for its content creators stating that the publisher was committed to DEI and antiracism and would make “colorism,” “colonial discourse,” “genderism,” and “intersectionality” part of everything the company produces.

Yet after the Heritage report, Pearson removed some of the antiracist materials from its website without explanation. The company’s “Business Partners Code of Conduct” now says Pearson and its partners will follow any state laws prohibiting the teaching of “gender” in K-12 schools.

The “Snack and Chat” content appears to violate Florida’s rules against exposing K-12 students to the topics of gender or sexual orientation. Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. sent a letter to Connections’ Florida director Marcie Trombino and has opened an investigation into the programming. “As commissioner of education, I expect you to govern yourselves according to state law,” Diaz wrote.

Other state officials and even federal lawmakers should be on notice. Though Pearson has sold off some of its K-12 operations in recent years, the company still holds large testing-related contracts with states such as Tennessee.

Of significance for federal taxpayers today, Pearson owns PDRI, the company that operates USA Hire, which is the web portal that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget uses to receive and review applications for federal job postings. Some 40 federal agencies use USA Hire, and more than 500,000 applications are submitted to the site annually. Federal officials should be aware of Pearson’s repeated attempts to inject DEI and other discriminatory ideas throughout its portfolio of services, even as it attempts to hide its dealings when exposed.

Lawmakers at the state and federal levels have introduced proposals to prohibit the use of taxpayer spending on DEI, and some of the proposals include prohibitions on using contractors that operate DEI programs. When he was a U.S. senator from Ohio, Vice President-elect JD Vance sponsored a federal proposal to do so and said he hopes to “root out DEI from our federal bureaucracy” and intends to “[strip] funding for DEI policies anywhere it exists.”

The optional “chat” for Florida virtual school students connects to a web of gender-related advocacy and racial discrimination that reaches all the way to Washington. State and federal officials should unravel this network, rejecting both graphic sexual content in schools and the racial discrimination promoted by DEI ideology.

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