for students across the U.S. The NGSS have been adopted by 17 states, the District of Columbia and Guam.
In examining the impact of political influence on K-12 science standards, the team found that human interactions with environmental problems and the level of urgency conveyed about addressing them were significantly correlated with states' primary political affiliation when the standards were implemented. Credit: Alonso Favela
Overall, the science standards in Democrat-led states scored 18% higher on connecting environmental problems with human behavior and 33% higher on the level of urgency conveyed about mitigating these factors, the team said. "Conservation,""extinction" and"endangered species" were described as the least urgent problems—with scores of 16.7%, 12% and 10.6%, respectively—while"waste/pollution" ranked the highest at 41.2%, the team found.climate change