Florida Science Standards Online for Public Comment

November 7, 2007- Following the lead of Kansas in 2005 and Ohio in 2002, the Florida Department of Education’s Office of Mathematics and Science has posted their latest draft of the state’s new science standards online for public comment. The first revision to the standards in a decade is drawing considerable public interest with the ease of online comment. Online visitors are able to rank the importance of each benchmark that students must know, as well as comment freely on each topic. Policy-makers, as well as parents, are keeping watch on the public debate regarding the inclusion of evolution in the revisions. Florida’s current science standards do not mention the term “evolution” but the proposed revisions include benchmarks concerning the evidence for evolution in the fossil record, human ancestry, and the process of natural selection.