A bridge in rural Iowa.
When a proposed set of revised state science standards received its first reading before the state board of education on April 17, 2025, language about evolution and climate change that was censored from a previous draft was partly restored.
In the previous revision of the standards, the word "evolution" was scrubbed, although not completely, from the current standards: for example, "Biological Evolution" became "Biological Change Over Time," "evolutionary relationships" became "relationships," and "simultaneous coevolution" became "simultaneous change." A reference to the 4.6-billion-year age of the earth was removed. Similarly, "climate change" became "climate trends," while references to impacts of human activity on the environment became references to impacts on the environment.
Subsequently, NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch, writing on Bleeding Heartland (February 12, 2025), urged Iowa to retain "the scientifically accurate and pedagogically appropriate language about evolution and climate change" in its current state science standards. Similarly, the Des Moines Register (March 9, 2025) commended the Iowans who protested these changes, commenting, "It's alarming that somebody with influence thought that muddying these waters was worth considering."
In the current revision of the standards, although "Biological Evolution" and "simultaneous coevolution" were restored, "evolutionary relationships" was not, and the reference to the 4.6-billion-year age of the earth is still absent. The reference to "climate change" is now to "climate changes and trends," but "the rise in global temperatures over the past century" is still the vaguer "the change in global temperatures in time" and the phrase "due to human activity," removed from a discussion of relationships among Earth systems, is still absent.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette (April 18, 2025) reported, "Despite updated language in the second version of the revised standards, some concerns remained among members of the public," but public feedback on the final proposed revised standards is no longer possible.
