Newspaper Group Charts Evolution Teaching in Schools

By: A new national study, conducted by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, culled 10 evolution-related themes from the National Research Council's recommended standards for science education.

Editorial Projects in Education is a nonprofit which produces school-oriented publications, including the newspaper Education Week.

It found, for example, that students in Virginia public schools may be getting only a portion of the proper education about evolution, putting the commonwealth in the bottom half of 41 states surveyed.

It found Virginia covered just five of the 10 themes. Those included biological adaptation and survival and the evidence for extinct life forms in fossils.

Not covered, according to the report, were such themes as common ancestry of species and the time frame of biological evolution.

The report focuses on Virginia's Standards of Learning, which provide a basic outline for how to cover topics in schools.

It's unfair, especially since the state's curriculum framework expands to cover all 10 themes in evolution, said Jim Firebaugh, Virginia's director of middle and high school instruction.

"Our framework is where much of the detail is provided," he said. "In our framework, it's pretty clear we match up very well."

In terms of common ancestry of species, for example, students in high school biology are expected to learn that millions of different organisms on Earth today share many structural and metabolic features.

The framework touches on the time frame of evolution delicately, saying, "structural adaptations may take millions of years to develop."

And teachers have no reason to depart from the framework when it comes to evolution.

That's because anything in the framework could appear on the SOL tests, said Charles Pyle, a spokesman for Virginia's Department of Education.

The report set aside the framework, however, in favor of state curriculum standards bearing a more official seal of approval, explained Christopher B. Swanson, the director of the research center at Editorial Projects.

He called the SOLs the state's foremost statement about educational expectations.

State SOLs are not due to be revised until 2010, Pyle said.

But some argue even the report's analysis of SOLs could be inaccurate. For instance, the report used keyword searches to determine whether the 10 themes were covered.

For "common ancestry," it looked for "ancestry" and "kinship." For the time frame, it sought "billions."

That method, said Virginia science coordinator Eric Rhoades, hardly offers a full snapshot of science education in the commonwealth.

It's not the first time a report has brought commonwealth evolution education standards into question.

A 2000 study by the Fordham Foundation think tank gave Virginia a "D" for its treatment of evolution _ which it said state schools only grazed.

Its author, retired California professor Lawrence Lerner, said Tuesday that the curriculum has since shown signs of improvement.