New rules?
Possible changes to academic standards decried
PHOENIX — A parade of teachers, parents and others lined up Monday to ask the state Board of Education to reject efforts by state schools chief Diane Douglas to alter — and they believe dilute — academic standards.
During a meeting lasting hours, several people testified that Douglas is seeking to undermine the science standards crafted by a group of teachers. They specifically took aim at what were last-minute changes she and her staff made in language dealing with climate change as well as changes in references to evolution.
But they also told board members they also should ignore a bid by Douglas to adopt charter school standards crafted by Hillsdale College, a private Christian school, for all public schools in the state.
“Those are standards coming from a politically conservative, religiously conservative school with a Euro-centric sort of base to the world,’’ said Karen McClelland, a member of the Sedona-Oak Creek school board. “We need our students to have equal emphasis on the rest of the world.’’
The board took no action, deferring any final vote for at least a month.
Hillsdale, in promoting charter schools based on these standards, say they will “train the minds of and improve the hearts of young people through a rigorous, classical education in the liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in the principles of moral character and civil virtue.’’
But the standards themselves have a religious bent.
For example, the standards for sixth-grade history include references to what the college calls “basic ideas in common,’’ including “the nature of God and humanity’’ and the Old Testament. The standards also say students should learn the “important stories’’ of creation, the Tower of Babel, and The Ten Commandments.
The New Testament is not ignored, with lessons including the Nativity, the baptism of Jesus, walking on water, and the Resurrection.
Douglas called what Hillsdale created the “gold standard for K-12 academics.’’ She also said it’s exactly what’s needed to deal with what she said has been a series of failure in Arizona education to actually educate students and not, in her words, simply make them “worker bees.’’
“We’ve stopped caring about making kids citizens and giving them the knowledge they need to be successful as citizens in this country,’’ she told Capitol Media Services.
“It’s become all about what’s your career going to be,’’ Douglas continued, saying the citizenship part of it has been neglected to say, “we’ll just job train you enough to get you a job.’’
By while Douglas’ focus on the Hillsdale standards are based on an increased focus on history and citizenship, her attempt to have them adopted is linked to her fight over the science standards.
More than 100 people took part in crafting the new science standards which have not been upgraded in 15 years. But in a series of back-and-forths with Douglas’ Department of Education, some things were altered.
Some of those changes occurred in the last few months round, after Douglas appointed Joseph Kezele, a biology teacher at Arizona Christian University and president of the Arizona Origin Science Association, to the review panel.
Kezele did not testify Monday. But he told Phoenix New Times reporter Joseph Flaherty that the earth is only 6,000 years old and that there was “plenty of space on (Noah’s) Ark for dinosaurs.’’
Douglas, a member of the board, sat silently while science teachers from across the state urged the board to rescind those last-minute changes.
Sara Torres, executive director of the Arizona Science Teachers Association, said returning the standards to what was first proposed “will ensure that teachers of science are not put in the position of teaching non-scientific ideas.’’
It’s not just a question of whether the teaching of evolution is being undermined.
Eileen Merritt, who is a teacher at the Arizona State University College of Education, said there are some very specific examples of what was removed, she believes improperly.
One would require students to “analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate change models to make evidencebased predictions of the current rate and scale of global or regional climate changes.’’
“Also removed, the idea that science and engineering will be essential both to understanding the possible impacts of global climate change, into informing decisions on how to slow its rate and consequences for humanity as well as for the rest of the planet,’’ Merritt said.
Douglas, for her part, suggested she was happy with those last-minute changes. But she also told board members that if they’re unwilling to adopt the standards in the form she presented them, then they should scrap them and simply adopt the entire Hillsdale-created standards.