Bid to amend state science standards stirs outrage

Parents and teachers on Monday rallied outside an Arizona Board of Education meeting, and then took turns during the meeting blasting a proposal to remove references to evolution and climate change from state science standards.

A separate proposal from Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas to replace all the education standards for K-12 district and charter schools with a set developed by a private college in Michigan with ties to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos drew another round of outrage.

Before the meeting, protesters with the Secular Coalition of Arizona held up signs with phrases such as “Teach

science not fairy tales” and made America great, make great again.”

“Our children and grandchildren are counting on us to get this right,” Eileen Merritt, an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, said to the board during her public comment.

Douglas addressed the science standards controversy during the discussion of the revisions.

“Personally, I absolutely believe that intelligent design ... should be taught alongside evolution. But the courts have deemed that unconstitutional,” she said. “The focus of the draft science standards is not to introduce intelligent design into the standards, but rather to clearly define the strengths and weaknesses of evolution theory . ... Science is supposed to be about questioning an explanation, not blind acceptance.”

She said the creationist tapped to help develop the standards has been a target of “hate-filled diatribes.”

“There is not creationism and intelligent design in the draft science standard,” she said. “Instead of acknowledging those facts ... what I’ve received are emotional invectives.”

The board is expected to vote on the science standards at next month’s meeting. It’s unclear if or when it may vote on Douglas’ proposal to replace all Arizona standards with the Hillsdale standards.

The board was scheduled to discuss a few different academic-standards issues. Standards are set by the state Board of Education and guide what public district and charter-school students are expected to learn at each grade level.

This is the first revision of science and history standards in more than a decade. In a lengthy process initiated by the state board nearly two years ago, the department brought together experts, teachers, community members and parents to help develop the standards.

The department has since been the subject of criticism over revisions to the science standards, including ones that removed evolution wording in some parts of the standards.

The protest and many of the comments marked another rebuke in a string of critiques of outgoing state Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas, who lost in the August Republican primary to Frank Riggs. “Science America

The Arizona Science Teachers Association requested four changes to the science standards draft.

1. Reinstate wording added to one section about natural selection, which reads that a student should “Gather and communicate evidence on how the process of natural selection provides an explanation of how new species can evolve.”

2. Reword another standard about evolution to read, “Gather, evaluate, and communicate multiple lines of empirical evidence to explain the mechanisms of biological evolution.”

3. Reinstate various phrases about climate change in high-school standards.

4. Restore another standard’s wording specifying that the diversity of living and extinct organisms is the result of evolution.

Sara Torres, the organization’s executive director, told state board members to not put science teachers “in the position of teaching non-scientific teachings.”

“If we can’t pay (teachers) more, the least we can do is give them high-quality resources,” DaNel Hogan, who directs an Arizona STEM project, said in her public comments.

Hogan encouraged the board to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards, a different set developed by the nonpartisan group Achieve.

Douglas in a separate agenda item introduced the idea of adopting a new slate of standards created by Hillsdale College’s charter school initiative called the “Barney Charter School Initiative’s Scope and Sequence.”

There are more references to Christianity in the Hillsdale standards than in Arizona’s draft standards. Judaism and Christianity in the sixth-grade Hillsdale plan are framed as “lasting ideas from ancient civilization.” One of the bullet points implies an exploration of “the nature of God and humanity” and under Judaism, “the idea of a ‘covenant’ between God and man.”

No other state appears to adhere to the Hillsdale standards.

It’s still unclear why Douglas is suddenly pushing to replace the current academic standards with the Hillsdale set, which she called the “gold standard” during the meeting.

The suggestion seems like a dramatic departure from her 2015 plan for the state to develop its own standards.

“We in Arizona are smart enough and engaged enough to develop standards that are our own and are uniquely designed for our specific state needs,” she wrote that year.