Florida’s new plan for teaching science in public schools lacks depth, skirts around the important topics of climate change and evolution and would be a “disservice” to the state’s students, dozens of parents and teachers told the Florida Department of Education late Wednesday.
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Nearly 300 people attended a virtual education department forum, with nearly all 29 speakers criticizing the state’s proposed new science standards, which are benchmarks for what should be taught in science lessons in kindergarten through 12th grade. Experts who’ve reviewed them have shared similar views, calling them a step backwards.
The state released its proposed standards on Sept. 25 and is now taking public comment on them, both on its website and in several meetings.
Robin Williams, a retired biology and environmental science teacher, called them a “disservice” to Florida students because they don’t fully tackle evolution.
The state’s current standards, adopted in 2008, call evolution one of science’s “big ideas” and insist it must be taught.
That makes sense and should not change, Williams said.
“Evolution is a fundamental underlying process unifying all of biology. To leave it out is ideology posing as biology,” she said.
The proposed standards barely mention evolution — a scientific theory explaining change in living species over time from natural selection that has been a cornerstone of biology for more than a century. The term “evolution,” in fact, is never defined in the new high school life sciences standards, though the concepts are sprinkled across several units.
The new standards would replace the current set, adopted after a months-long, statewide fight over the inclusion of evolution as a required subject of study. Those who opposed the 2008 standards argued creationism, or the biblical story that God created all living things, should be taught alongside evolution.
Education Commissioner Henry Mack seemed to some to re-ignite that fight with a statement released with the new standards that included a reference to “the book of creation.”
But Thursday morning he took to social media to insist he was not “smuggling a Sunday-school lesson into Biology,” adding in his post on X that, “I am not advocating religious influence in the standards. I am opposing the opposite error: treating nature as a prop for adult ideology, or treating wonder as something to be talked out of children by leftist zealots.”
His original statement said, “The classical tradition taught that nature is intelligible because it is ordered—that the book of creation can be read by reason. Florida’s new science standards will form students who observe carefully, reason rigorously, and treat the natural world as something given to be known, not invented.”
During Wednesday’s forum, one parent asked for clarification on what Mack meant by that. But state education department employees facilitating the meeting did not respond to that or other questions from speakers, instead thanking attendees and encouraging them to submit their concerns in writing.
Chris Vercelli, a parent in Sarasota County who regularly attends government meetings to preach Christianity, suggested at Wednesday’s meeting that he read the commissioner’s statement as an endorsement of his views and said he was in “full support” of the new standards.
It was “refreshing” to hear the state was “entertaining the idea of teaching creation and intelligent design in schools,” he said, referring to the argument that an “intelligent cause” better explains living things than evolution by natural selection.
“The way that evolution is taught really is like a bait and switch … that means that everything originated from primordial soup, and there is no God. That’s just ridiculous. That is like total non-science,” Vercelli said.
The proposed standards also give little attention to human-made climate change and do not use that term, instead referring to “anthropogenic activities” that affect “Earth’s systems.”
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Brad Dupke, an Earth science teacher and geologist in Hillsborough County, asked how the state expects him to teach a required unit on fossils without teaching evolution and climate change.
“We need to call a spade a spade instead of trying to dance around what it is. I can’t teach geologic history of the Earth without being able to say how the climate changed,” he said.
In addition to complaints about the state’s proposed handling of evolution and climate change, several speakers said the standards were too numerous and lacked rigor and others criticized the way the state posted its proposal for public review. Instead of a single document, the department initially posted each standard on a separate page, requiring clicking through hundreds of pages to view all the standards.
By Thursday morning, the state’s standards review website had been altered so there were three documents, one each for elementary, middle and high school, but to review still required clicking through hundreds of pages.
The state’s academic standards help guide school districts’ lesson plans, determine the topics covered in the state’s standardized tests and select the subjects included in textbooks publishers want to sell to Florida’s public schools.
Mindy Pearson, who taught middle school science in Hillsborough County for almost 20 years, said the standards read as an “encyclopedia of scientific facts” instead of a framework for teaching. Pearson said she also was “gobsmacked” the state would be “skating over” climate change and evolution.
“We’re getting away from the big ideas in science, things that get kids excited and want to explore, and we’re going to bog them down with all these facts that most of us didn’t even encounter until we were in college,” she said.
On X, the Florida Department of Education defended the changes, noting that the word “climate” appears 107 times across all grade levels.
“In these standards, students analyze climate patterns, ocean currents, temperature data, and ecosystem changes—ensuring they learn REAL climate science, not ideology,” the department wrote on X on Thursday.
In its original announcement last week, the state said it undertook changes to create standards that are “content-rich, coherent and grounded in facts and evidence” and that ignore “trendy themes” and “adult ideological contests.”
The removal of climate change from the proposed new standards is not surprising. In 2024, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that stripped the phrase “climate change” from much of Florida law, reversing 16 years of state policy and, critics said, undermining Florida’s support of renewable and clean energy. A few months later, the education department told some science textbook publishers that they must remove the term from their books if they wanted to sell to Florida public schools.
Some speakers expressed concern about the rigor of Florida’s new standards. A K-8 science teacher said the standards don’t go into enough depth.
“This emphasis on simplicity kind of comes at the expense of scientific depth, precision, and accuracy. In science education, simplicity isn’t always a virtue,” she said.
Jennifer Holt, a middle school science teacher in Manatee County, said she was pleased to see more hands-on science in the curriculum. But Holt said it was “very concerning” that some of the concepts were in the wrong order, meaning students could be tested on concepts before they’ve been taught the foundational knowledge to understand them.
The state is holding one more public comment seminar on Monday at a high school in Walton County in the Panhandle. The standards are scheduled for a December vote by the State Board of Education.
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