New Jersey's Board of Education voted Wednesday to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards, a curriculum that happens to include climate science instruction for high school students.
Like so many curriculum shifts underway nationally, the Next Generation Science Standards became a political football in the ongoing conservative versus liberal culture war.
For what it's worth, the standards were developed by National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Achieve, a nonpartisan educational nonprofit aimed at reforming curriculum standards and improving student achievement.
Wyoming representatives have so far rejected the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and politicians in Oklahoma and South Carolina have staged lengthy battles over what their teenagers will learn in the coming school years.
So far, New Jersey joins 11 other states in adopting the science standards. Proponents of the NGSS have launched what they are calling the Climate Science Students Bill of Rights.
'We all feel that students have a right to learn about the causes, effects, risks and possible responses to climate change, but unfortunately, some vested interests are intent on perpetuating doubt, denial and confusion about the connection between human consumption of fossil fuels and the changing climate,' National Center for Science Education programs and policy director Mark McCaffrey said in a news release. 'Working together, we can make sure that young people have the knowledge and know-how they will need to make informed decisions about these vital issues, which are inherently ideal interdisciplinary and integrating themes for education.'
It will be impossible for politicians to improve America's lagging student performance and prepare its future workforce to compete in a global economy if they continue to believe they are smarter than scientists. They should move out of the way and let the scientists go back to setting this nation's science curriculum.
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Entities 0 Name: American Association for the Advancement of Science Count: 1 1 Name: Wyoming Count: 1 2 Name: Mark McCaffrey Count: 1 3 Name: New Jersey Count: 1 4 Name: Oklahoma Count: 1 5 Name: NGSS Count: 1 6 Name: National Center for Science Education Count: 1 7 Name: Next Generation Science Standards Count: 1 8 Name: New Jersey 's Board of Education Count: 1 9 Name: Climate Science Students Bill of Rights Count: 1 10 Name: South Carolina Count: 1 11 Name: National Science Teachers Association Count: 1 12 Name: America Count: 1 13 Name: National Research Council Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1mYAoeI Title: Big Data Comes To College Description: Information Technology at Purdue When students at Purdue University are reading their homework assignments, sometimes the assignments are reading them too. A software program called Course Signals tracks various pieces of information, including the number of points earned in the course and the amount of time the student has spent logged in to the college's software platform.
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