{"id":2431,"date":"2016-02-14T11:08:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T16:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=2431"},"modified":"2016-02-14T11:33:37","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T16:33:37","slug":"instructional-materials-bills-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2431","title":{"rendered":"Instructional Materials Bills Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

My column was published in the Community Voices section of today’s Daytona Beach News Journal: Don’t mix science, religion in public schools<\/a>. It’s \"hays\"<\/a>a rebuttal to a previous column<\/a> written by a Flagler County school board member. She supported the two very bad instructional materials bills currently languishing in the Florida legislature. My piece goes out on a limb with a fun\u00c2\u00a0analogy inspired by the bills’ senate sponsor. Sen. Hays is a dentist, semi-retired. I felt I needed to poke him a bit while I still could. Hays announced recently that he’s not running for reelection<\/a> in the senate but is instead shooting for a supervisor of elections position. He won’t be missed by us at Florida Citizens for Science. But he will be missed by me, though, because he was a reliable anti-evolution quote machine. Read some of his greatest hits in my latest Going Ape post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As far as the bad bills are concerned, the good news is that neither one has been scheduled for a single committee hearing. The bills in their current form are essentially dead. There’s not enough time left in the legislative session for them to see any progress.<\/p>\n

Notice I said “in their current form.” That’s because a\u00c2\u00a0part of the\u00c2\u00a0concept behind the\u00c2\u00a0bills is alive and now lurking as an amendment to a different bill that is moving along. This Tampa Bay Times blog<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0has the scoop. So, the folks behind those bad instructional materials bills have managed a small victory and so have we. If the amendment survives and the bill it’s attached to passes into law, a subset of what they don’t like — “any material containing mature or adult content” — can be challenged. But I don’t see how the amendment can be stretched to apply to our main concern: science education. Here’s the amendment:<\/p>\n

The parent of each public school student in grades 6 through 12 must be provided, for each course offered at the school in which the student is enrolled, a course syllabus with a complete listing by title of the instructional materials to be used in the course. The syllabus must identify any material containing mature or adult content and notify the parent of the procedures for objecting to his or her child’s use of a specific instructional material pursuant to s. 1006.28(1)(a)2.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My column was published in the Community Voices section of today’s Daytona Beach News Journal: Don’t mix science, religion in public schools. It’s a rebuttal to a previous column written by a Flagler County school board member. She supported the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-Dd","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2414,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2414","url_meta":{"origin":2431,"position":0},"title":"A little press about “instructional materials” bills","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"An Orlando Sentinel columnist takes apart several bills that Sen. Alan Hays has filed this year in the state legislature:\u00c2\u00a0Hays files wild bills in Senate. His bill about school instructional materials, which Florida Citizens for Science opposes, gets a mention: Hays wants parents to be able to inspect all \"instructional\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2381,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2381","url_meta":{"origin":2431,"position":1},"title":"Tracking Textbook bills","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 23, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"We will use this post to try and keep track of two bills in our state legislature that could change textbook adoption and review procedures. See our previous post for a summary of why these bills are of concern. Senate Bill SB 1018: Instructional Materials for K-12 Public Education 12\/17\/15\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2421,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2421","url_meta":{"origin":2431,"position":2},"title":"They’re not dead yet & Getting the word out there","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In my previous post I said that the \"instructional materials\" bills in the state legislature don't look like they're going anywhere. But I also said that they can't be considered dead yet. I was right:\u00c2\u00a0'No bill is dead' in Florida Senate Education, chairman says. Chairman John Legg told the Gradebook\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2426,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2426","url_meta":{"origin":2431,"position":3},"title":"A columnist in their corner","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The group behind the two very bad \"instructional materials\" bills currently languishing in the state legislature apparently has a newspaper columnist in their corner. I don't believe I've read Brent Batten's work before in the Naple Daily News but I'm told that he's a conservative. As such, Batten has written\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2384,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2384","url_meta":{"origin":2431,"position":4},"title":"NCSE takes note of Sunshine State bills","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 29, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The National Center for Science Education has taken note of the instructional materials bills filed in the Florida legislature. Their analysis is thorough, taking note of the many problems the bills have. For instance: \"A further provision of the bills is also of concern. Currently, instructional materials used in Florida's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2428,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2428","url_meta":{"origin":2431,"position":5},"title":"Yet another piece siding with the bad bills appears","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"You've got to hand it to the gang supporting those horrible instructional materials bills. They have influential friends and they're not afraid to use them. Flagler School Board member Janet McDonald wrote a lengthy Community Voices piece in the Daytona Beach News Journal:\u00c2\u00a0Give parents curriculum tools. Of course, it touts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2431"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2435,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431\/revisions\/2435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}