"Evolution education is improving, and ASCB helped"

NCSE Executive Director Ann Reid

NCSE's executive director Ann Reid discussed the results of the recent NCSE/Penn State national survey of public high school biology teachers in a June 30, 2020, post on the American Society for Cell Biology's blog, describing them as "signs that the dedicated work, over more than a decade, of a great many supporters of accurate evolution education, including ASCB, is paying off."

The survey, Reid explained, "shows real, and impressive, progress. In 2007, a bare majority of public high school biology teachers — 51% — emphasized the scientific consensus on evolution without giving any credence to creationism in their classrooms. In 2019, more than two-thirds of them — 67% — did so." "There is still a long way to go, to be sure," she added. "It is simply not acceptable that a third of U.S. public high school biology teachers continue to present evolution misleadingly!"

The results of the NCSE/Penn State survey are described in detail in Eric Plutzer, Glenn Branch, and Ann Reid's "Teaching evolution in U.S. public schools: A continuing challenge," published in Evolution: Education and Outreach, expounded further by Branch on the BMC On Society blog and the National Science Teaching Association blog, and discussed by Reid in a Nature commentary.

Glenn Branch
Short Bio

Glenn Branch is Deputy Director of NCSE.

branch@ncse.ngo