A bill to allow the Wyoming state board of education to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards will be introduced in the legislature, according to the Billings Gazette (December 15, 2014). John Patton (R-District 29) told the newspaper, "What the bill does is pretty straight forward and simple ... It simply removes Footnote No. 3 in the appropriations bill. It means the State Board of Education can continue with its work uninterrupted by the Legislature." He was optimistic about the prospect for the bill's passage.
As NCSE previously reported, a footnote in Wyoming's budget for 2014-2016 precluded the use of state funds "for any review or adoption" of the NGSS, and the treatment of climate change was cited as the reason for the prohibition. The Wyoming state board of education subsequently declined to develop a new set of science standards independent of the NGSS. Despite the legislature's decision, local school districts are free to adopt the NGSS, and about fifteen (of forty-eight) have reportedly done so.
So far the NGSS have been adopted in thirteen states — California, Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia — plus the District of Columbia. The treatment of evolution and climate science in the standards occasionally provokes controversy (including a recently dismissed lawsuit, COPE v. Kansas), but Wyoming is the only state where their adoption was derailed explicitly over evolution or climate science.