Photo by Katherine McAdoo on Unsplash.
Pennsylvania's House Bill 2795, introduced and referred to the House Education Committee on August 13, 2020, would, if enacted, require the state's public schools to provide instruction on climate change aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. The department of education would also be required to develop a model climate change science curriculum to be freely available to public and non-profit private schools.
Climate change is absent from Pennsylvania's state science standards, which date from 2002. A new set of standards is presently under development. When the process began, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star (October 16, 2019) reported, "Educators expect that climate change education will be a major sticking point in the overhaul of Pennsylvania's science standards, which currently lack any mention of human-caused global warming."
The bill is the nineteenth measure aiming to support climate change education introduced in a state legislature in 2020. Writing on the National Science Teaching Association's blog (March 19, 2020), NCSE's deputy director Glenn Branch commented, "Such legislative support for climate change education is welcome, especially considering that in recent years proposals aimed at undermining climate change education have been introduced in state after state."
