Measuring the Treatment of Evolution in Science Classes

I recently wrote an Introduction to Evolution on this site outlining the basics of evolution and exploring the disconnect between the scientific community and the education system of the United States when it comes to the teaching of evolution. A new study by Louise Mead and Anton Mates, published in Evolution: Education and Outreach has performed a very thorough analysis of the teaching of evolution in science curricula, comparing each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The authors compare their results to results of a similar analysis in 2000, which was referenced in my previous article. Essentially, 9 states (California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina) and the District of Columbia received grades of A, meaning the treatment of evolution in science classes was particularly good, while 5 states (Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia) received grades of F, meaning treatment of evolution was particularly poor. Kansas, in particular, is cited as a major success story. After several years of battling over standards for teaching evolution and intelligent design, Kansas “standards have improved immensely.”

While several states, including Kansas and Florida, improved their standards, several states, including Hawaii and Texas, actually regressed, often by the incorporation of creationist jargon. Overall conclusions from the study suggest that standards of teaching science in the United States public school system include more about evolution than in 2000. The authors also offer some advice on how to address science education standards in your state:

Get involved. Check to see when your state is next reviewing state standards, and ask your department of education or state educators’ associations how to participate in that process. Take a careful look at the language of your standards; check not only for explicit creationist claims but also for language that permits or encourages teaching material that makes such claims. Do not confine your attention to life science courses; check whether earth and space science courses discuss cosmological and geological evolution and whether human evolution is discussed in social studies or anatomy courses (as is sometimes the case). And make sure that the groundwork for all of these subjects is laid in K-8, rather than introduced for the first time in high school.