New team forming for next phase of Iowa’s science standards review

A review team that Iowa formed last fall to revise its K-12 science education standards and draft recommended changes -- which some team members said contained changes they hadn’t signed off on -- has been discharged so a second team now can review public feedback and recommend changes based on the input.

“The team serves in an advisory capacity to the department,” Iowa Department of Education spokeswoman Heather Doe told The Gazette. “It does not finalize the second proposed revised draft standards.”

She said the same was true for the first team of 37 educators, administrators, and education experts — some of whom spoke out after the first draft of new science education standards went public, reporting it wasn’t the version they recommended.

“I don’t remember the term ‘climate trends’ in the document that we saw,” review team member and University of Iowa education professor Jeff Nordine said during a public forum earlier this month — highlighting ways in which the draft document changed after his review team last looked at it.

Referencing erasure of the terms “climate change” and “biological evolution,” Nordine said, “There was language in that document that referred to the Earth’s age as 4.6 billion years — that has been removed.”

“I don’t know how that happened. I don’t remember being informed that that was going to happen.”

Doe told The Gazette the department is following the same process it uses to review other academic standards and that “changes between each review committee and the department recommendation are to be expected.” She said review team members were told as much.

“Although the department has been clear about this process throughout each standards revision, including the English Language Arts and Mathematics standards revisions, moving forward, the department will ensure that all committee members affirm their understanding of this role,” Doe said. “Only the State Board of Education has the authority to adopt final standards.”

‘Do not prescribe or mandate’

Iowa’s K-12 academic standards — covering things like literacy, mathematics, social studies and science — outline “what students need to learn to be prepared for success as they progress each year and after high school,” according to the department.

They “define what students should be able to do at specified grade levels,” Doe said.

“They do not prescribe or mandate any particular curriculum,” she said. “Each district selects its own curriculum, textbooks and other classroom materials.”

Iowa’s current science standards were adopted a decade ago in 2015 and — at the high school level, for example — stress that students should be able to “communicate scientific information that common ancestry and biological evolution are supported by multiple lines of empirical evidence.”

Students also should be able to “design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity,” according to the current standards, which note among its core concepts that human activity is having “adverse impacts on biodiversity through overpopulation, overexploitation, habitat destruction, pollution, introduction of invasive species, and climate change.”

In the revised standards under consideration, language on biological evolution has been amended to say “biological change,” and climate change references have been replaced with the phrase “climate trends.”

“Removing or altering references to well-founded scientific consensus not only dilutes the depth of our current standards, but these changes can make real impacts on students’ understanding of critical concepts of science,” science educator Jason Martin-Hiner said during a Jan. 15 public forum on the changes.

Debate around the proposed Iowa science standards — and questions of who finalized the first draft — has captured the attention of some national education entities, including the National Center for Science Education, a California-based nonprofit organization that lists its mission as ensuring students “receive an accurate and effective evolution and climate science education.”

“We do this by supporting teachers with resources and best teaching practices; by monitoring and mobilizing against efforts to undermine science education, whether at the statehouse or in the classroom; and by engaging in research to understand, maintain, and improve science education,” according to its public tax filings.

Five phases

Following media reports on changes to Iowa’s science standards, the national center published a story on its website under the headline, “Shenanigans in Iowa’s science standards review.”

But Doe pushed back against the notion that references to evolution and climate change were removed.

“For instance, as you review the first proposed revised draft, you’ll see that in Life Science, there is an entire unit on ‘Biological Change Over Time’ that covers ‘how species evolved,’ ” she said in an email.

And, Doe said, “climate trends, which are covered throughout the first proposed revised draft, is the appropriate term to focus instruction on climate data over time, and is used by other government agencies.”

She also stressed the five-phase standards review process is the same it follows for other curricular areas.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com