Changes could soon be coming to the curriculum for Nebraska grade school students.
The Nebraska State Board of Education debates a controversial subject; climate change.
According to state law, the board needs to update the science department standards every seven years and if approved, it would be the first time the language would be in students' curriculum.
“The students with this curriculum are not learning enough of scientific facts, that is stated facts that are beyond question-global warming is still a question,” said Doug Kagan against the proposed standards, “If you check through history you'll see that its cyclical periods of global warming periods of global cooling.
However there's many others who refute that claim.
“We've been putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere it is heating up the planet,” argued Green Party co-chair Charles Ostdiek who is relieved the board is taking a look at adding climate change, “It's about time, they've been dragging their feet for quite a while now.”
In this proposal students would evaluate the reliability and validly of climate models for students to gather and analyze data from models to see if climate change is happening.
An earlier draft said climate change was a settled science, so this is a more watered down version.
The board got public input too.
A survey of just over 700 teachers and parents, 91-percent said the science standards are appropriately challenging and 88-percent agreed the draft standards reflected the essential knowledge and skills that students need.
To look at the updated standards click here: https://www.education.ne.gov/documents/HomePage/Nebraska_Science_Standards_DRAFT_8-3-2017.pdf
