Sunday, December 28, 2014
By Ryan Quinn, Staff writer
ryan.quinn@wvgazette.com
304-348-1254
@RyanEQuinn

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — At the request of a West Virginia Board of Education member who said he doesn’t believe human-influenced climate change is a “foregone conclusion,” new state science standards on the topic were altered before the state school board adopted them.

School officials said the changes are meant to encourage more student debate on the idea that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions are causing a global rise in temperatures — a theory that an overwhelming majority of scientists accepts. ... Earlier this month, the state school board adopted the new education requirements, based on the national Next Generation Science Standards blueprint, with the plan to instruct teachers how to teach them by the 2016-17 school year.

The science standards are not part of Common Core, which contains nationally suggested standards for English and math, but they do have Common Core connections embedded and were crafted with aid of the same Washington, D.C., nonprofit group. West Virginia’s Common Core standards are also dubbed Next Generation. ... Robin Sizemore, science coordinator for the state Office of Secondary Learning, said the new science standards will be the first time students will be required to learn about the evidence for human-driven climate change — the current standards only cover them in elective courses.

But state school board member Wade Linger asked that several changes be made to the drafted standards before they were put out for a monthlong public comment period.