Thousands of comments delay WV science standards vote

Thousands of comments delay science standards vote
by Ryan Quinn, Staff writer

The West Virginia Board of Education’s expected vote this week to adopt new K-12 science standards — the first to require teaching about global warming in mandatory courses — has been delayed due to an “unusually large number of comments.”

Liza Cordeiro, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education, said the standards received comments from around 7,000 individuals during their 30-day public comment period, which ended last month. She said she couldn’t confirm whether the standards received the most comments ever submitted on a proposed policy change, but said the average number is about 100.

Because the Department of Education must read every comment, in part to see whether the board needs to consider any changes, Cordeiro said the expected vote will be pushed back until next month.

“Each and every comment is logged and coded with matching policy,” Cordeiro wrote in an email. “Content specialists and office leads assist in creating the comment log and organizing it for board review.”

After a previous 30-day comment period, the school board approved in December a version of the standards, which are based off the national Next Generation Science Standards blueprint that West Virginia and 25 other states helped develop. But that adopted version included modifications to the teaching of climate change. http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20141228/GZ01/141229489

After receiving local and national criticism http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150113/GZ01/150119714 saying the changes sowed unwarranted doubt into the well-established theory that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions are driving global warming, the school board voted in January to withdraw the full set of standards http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150114/GZ01/150119623 and use a version of the standards without the controversial changes. That version was put out for another 30-day comment period.

The thousands of people who commented far exceed the number who opined during the first 30-day comment period, when many didn’t know the climate change alterations had been made. Department of Education employees made the modifications — affecting only a few lines in the 70-page standards document — in response to school board member Wade Linger’s concern about the teaching of human-influenced climate change, which he said he doesn’t believe is a “foregone conclusion.”

The department didn’t notify all school board members or the individuals who helped vet the standards — including members of the West Virginia Science Teachers Association — about the climate change modifications.

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http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150308/GZ01/150309278