Committee members: We didn’t recommend science standards omitting climate change, evolution

A version of proposed updates to Iowa’s science education standards — omitting the phrases “climate change” and “biological evolution” — is not the version a 37-member “Iowa Department of Education Science Standards Revision Team” signed off on, members said during a public forum Wednesday.

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“My recollection in the committee was that we had come to consensus to maintain the current standard statements that are adopted by Iowa and to add additional context,” University of Iowa education professor Jeff Nordine said of his service on the revision team.

The group, he said, was told its final document needed only to go through a “copyediting process and then be released for public comment.”

“Our document was different, and it was different in substantive ways,” Nordine said of the version released publicly, adding that he was surprised by the changes.

“I don’t remember the term ‘climate trends’ in the document that we saw.”

The education department’s current, decade-old science standards — which Nordine said his group wanted to maintain — mentioned climate change more than a dozen times, spelling out in a “core” concept that rising temperatures “strongly depend on the amounts of human-generated greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere.”

The proposed new science education standards — open for public comment via a series of public forums — refer instead to “climate trends,” noting the Earth has experienced “natural warming and cooling throughout history, such as during the ice age.”

The proposed standards made public also have dropped the term “biological evolution” — where current standards the group wanted to keep urge teachers to “communicate scientific information that common ancestry and biological evolution are supported by multiple lines of empirical evidence.”

“Genetic information, like the fossil record, provides evidence of evolution,” according to standards the state is looking to replace.

The revised proposal replaced the phrase “biological evolution” with “change.” And it replaced the comment about “evidence of evolution” but reporting genetic information “gives important clues about how species have evolved.”

“There was language in that document that referred to the Earth’s age as 4.6 billion years — that has been removed,” Nordine said. “I don’t know how that happened. I don’t remember being informed that that was going to happen.”

Another committee member — Angie Breitbach from the Dubuque Community School District — corroborated Nordine’s comments.

“The document that was presented for public input was not what we had voted on and came to consensus,” she said. “I found out today that my name was being run through a circle of informal educators, and that I was being admonished for my role in not fixing or speaking out about what was presented to the public.”

‘Climate trends’

Heather Doe, Department of Education spokeswoman, disputes that references to evolution were removed from the standards document.

“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.

Additionally, she 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.”

The proposed changes come amid an increasingly polarized political landscape in which Republican lawmakers want more say in what students are taught — not just at the K-12 level but in higher education.

With the new legislative session underway, Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, this week said reforming the universities’ core curriculum will be among his new higher education committee’s priorities.

The group also will consider policies to increase intellectual diversity on campus, improve civics proficiency among graduates, “fight back against predatory institutional accreditors” and review academic programs to align with Iowa’s workforce needs.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds last year signed into law a measure requiring schools adopt new social studies and civics education standards with a focus on Western civilization and U.S. and Iowa history. In doing so, she also required a review of Iowa’s educational standards.

Iowa’s proposed new science standards — inviting public comment during five public forums this month — do include some mention of humanity’s impact on the climate.

“The changing Earth is a result of the cyclical and self-perpetuating nature of plate tectonics, human behavior, and climate trends,” according to one clarification on the “Earth materials” content.

“Changes in the atmosphere from human activity have increased carbon dioxide concentrations and affected Earth's climate,” according to another clarification on “weather and climate” content.

But in some areas like “global climate trends,” “weather and climate” and “biodiversity and humans,” the proposed update removes direct and specific language about the human-climate relationship — including that human activity is “having adverse impacts on biodiversity through overpopulation, overexploitation, habitat destruction, pollution, introduction of invasive species, and climate change.”

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Reaction to changes

But many members of the public and education community in Iowa voiced opposition and expressed concern during a Wednesday public forum about the language omissions and how they were made.

“I’m gonna do my best not to swear,” said UI professor Ted Neal, who was on the committee that recommended science standards seven years ago. “I knew back then that what we would do is we would put forth a smoke show to the Legislature to get them to adopt the Iowa science standards, and we would hide evolution in climate change because the document would be so big they wouldn't see it.

“Well, seven years later, they’ve seen it.”

Neal voiced anger about the omissions and about the treatment of the committee, “where we throw all of these amazing people who've spent all of this time and energy putting forth their efforts to make the best standards they could make, and then we go behind their backs and we change it.”

Educators and community members discussed why climate change and evolution curriculum is important.

“I’m a little dismayed that this language change has occurred,” retired Grant Wood AEA science consultant Christopher Soldat said.

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“Why were there such dramatic changes to the standards and to the draft document after the team voted on the draft?” educator Birgitta Meade said during the forum. “We've heard public evidence that this occurred. We need to hear more about that.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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