Standards and the Teachers who Need Them
Now that the voters of Kansas have replaced the pro-ignorance majority on the state school board with a pro-science one, I highlight a comment made today that demonstrates why good standards are important for teachers who come under political pressure.
About a month ago I wrote “Georgia Education on My Mind”, in which I mentioned the struggle of one veteran science teacher, Pat New, to give her students the education they deserved. Eventually, her administrators backed off when they discovered that what she wanted to teach, evolution, was actually part of the state standards. Today she left the following comment:
I was that teacher in Mike Winerip’s New York Times article. I can’t thank the Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education enough for, first of all, their fight to make sure evolution was in the Georgia science standards and, second of all, for their support when I was in the middle of fighting my administrators and parents over my teaching those standards. Having those standards in place was the reason I decided to take the stand in the first place. I knew that, finally, I could teach evolution the way it was supposed to be taught, as the backbone of life science. Thank you, all of you who fought that fight.
Pat New
Let’s keep it up. The teachers need us.