« Back to Common Core Watch

Missing the mark on evolution

Category: The Education Gadfly / March 23, 2012

 

Paul Gross penned an editorial in yesterday’s Gadfly Weekly on the neglect of evolution in many state standards that’s definitely worth a read. While Dr. Gross notes that science standards are falling short in general,

Particularly dismaying is how rarely state standards indicate that evolution has anything to do with us, Homo sapiens. Even states with thorough coverage of evolution, like Massachusetts, avoid linking that controversial term with ourselves. Only four states—Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Rhode Island—discuss human evolution in their current standards. This isn’t just a Bible Belt issue. Even the bluest of blue states don’t expect their students to know that humans and apes share ancestry.

Related Articles

In the Knowledge Economy, It’s Knowledge That Matters

The industrial economy that typified the twentieth century has been replaced by what has been dubbed the “knowledge” economy. And experts agree that while the industrial economy was driven by productivity, the knowledge economy is and will be driven by ideas.

Put up or shut up: Will leaders seize the chance to improve accountability?

Our failure to evolve NCLB and its accountability policies has led to a host of negative unintended consequences

Opening up the black box: Common Core as a classroom-level reform

It is exactly because Common Core is pushing reformers to take classroom-level change more seriously that it has the potential to have such far-reaching impact

Standards, Testing, & Accountability

blog comments powered by Disqus

Subscribe to Common Core Watch

Our Blogs

About the Editor

Kathleen Porter-Magee
Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow

Kathleen Porter-Magee is a Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow and the Senior Director of the High Quality Standards Program at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where she leads the Institute’s work on state, national, and international standards evaluation and analysis.

Read More

Recent Tweets

Education Gadfly Weekly

April 4, 2013

  

Please leave this field empty

Archives