Dive Brief:
- Wyoming's state legislature has voted to repeal the state's ban on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). If signed by Gov. Matt Mead, the new legislation will allow Wyoming’s Board of Education to adopt the standards.
- Wyoming was the first state to reject the standards after legislators criticized the teaching of man-made climate change as fact.
- Last year, Wyoming was in the throes of debating NGSS when a last-minute provision thrown into a budget line prevented their review or funding.
Dive Insight:
The Next Generation Science Standards came to fruition because science standards hadn’t been updated since 1996. If the United States wants to be on the cutting edge in science, as it has made clear many times, it needs to start by educating its youth on the full spectrum of scientific findings.
Thirty scientists unanimously advised Wyoming to adopt the benchmarks before their ban last year. At the time, Republican Rep. Matt Teeters had argued that, as the nation's largest energy exporter, Wyoming would be harmed by the teaching of man-made climate change as fact. The state is not the only one to try and curb that subject's teaching. In January, the West Virginia Board of Education adopted the Next Generation Science Standards, but discreetly tweaked them to skip over man-made climate change. The board was eventually shamed into backtracking, somewhat similar to Wyoming's switch.