Miami, Florida. Photo by Denys Kostyuchenko on Unsplash.
Florida's proposed new science standards continued to attract criticism at the last of a series of public forums in Orlando held on October 27, 2026, according to the Orlando Sentinel (October 27, 2026).
The treatment of evolution was of particular concern. While evolution is described as "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" in the current standards, adopted in 2008, the proposed standards barely use the term. Joshua Garrett, a teacher in Orange County Public Schools, said that they "danced around" evolution.
Apparently alluding to the avoidance of the phrases "climate change" and "global warming" as well as "evolution," Thomas Simon, a Winter Park parent, commented, "If this board could explicitly name communism in the history standards ... you must explicitly name the foundations of modern medicine, agriculture, and energy."
Teri O'Connor, an elementary science teacher in Orange County, complained about the volume of the standards, which contain almost 1000 benchmarks at the high school level alone. "It's only 180 days of school. That right there is an issue, especially if you want to dive in. If we need to teach the rigor of it and to critically think about each one, that's difficult."
Although the public comment period is not yet over, the Sentinel reported that the department already updated the proposed standards on the basis of about 1800 comments received thus far; it is not clear what changes have been made.
