The Keystone State recently took a huge step forward in preparing its students in its public schools to cope with the warming world they will inherit. A new set of state science standards — which specify what knowledge and abilities students are expected to acquire through their course of study — was adopted in the spring of 2022 and will take effect in 2025. And climate change is included at the middle school and the high school level.
That might not seem so surprising. But the new standards will replace a set of standards adopted in 2002, the oldest science standards in use in the country. And the old standards received the grade of F for their treatment of climate change in a 2020 study from the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, with one reviewer observing that they failed “to address the presence or reality of climate change in any form.”
In contrast, the new standards will expect middle school students to “ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century” and high school students to “analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.”
These expectations are identical to expectations found in the Next Generation Science Standards, which have been endorsed by the National Science Teaching Association and adopted by twenty states (plus the District of Columbia) so far. A further twenty-seven states (now including Pennsylvania) have adopted standards based on the same framework on which the NGSS are based. So Pennsylvania is finally catching up with the national norm.
Additionally, the new standards include a new domain for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability. Comparable to the four traditional domains of Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Sciences, and Technology and Engineering, the new domain incorporates such topics as agricultural and environmental systems and resources, environmental literacy skills, and sustainability and stewardship. So students will have the opportunity to learn about climate change here as well.
The inclusion of climate change in the new standards is likely to be popular. Pennsylvanians certainly are aware of the need for climate change education. Indeed, 77 percent — more than three quarters — of them agree that schools should teach our children about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to global warming, according to the latest estimate from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
But having taken such a huge step forward, Pennsylvania must not falter. In particular, it will be necessary to equip teachers to meet the increased demands of the new standards. A national survey conducted by the National Center for Science Education and Pennsylvania State University revealed a striking lack of preparation for teaching climate change: more than half of the teachers surveyed reported having never taken a course in college that devoted as much as a single class session to the topic.
Thankfully, farsighted legislators have recognized the problem of teacher underpreparation to teach climate change effectively and sought to solve it. In the past few years, legislation that specifically allocates funds for curriculum and professional development regarding climate science appeared in statehouses across the country and was enacted in three states: Washington, California, and most recently Maine. Pennsylvania would do well to follow their lead.
Pennsylvania’s climate is already changing, with soaring temperatures, increasing rainfall, more frequent extreme weather events, and rising sea levels all documented by the state Department of Environmental Protection. It is encouraging that science education in Pennsylvania is on its way to changing as well. But it is necessary for the state to follow through on its commitment to improve science education by ensuring that its teachers are ready, willing, and able to teach climate change effectively.
Glenn Branch is the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit organization that promotes and defends accurate and effective science education.
Submitted by,
Glenn Branch
