{"id":2985,"date":"2017-11-29T17:46:21","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T22:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=2985"},"modified":"2017-11-29T17:47:19","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T22:47:19","slug":"2985","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2985","title":{"rendered":"Another “controversial theories” bill filed and other bad news"},"content":{"rendered":"

My sincere apologies, folks. I have a laundry list of bad news to tell you about. Let’s get right to it.<\/p>\n

“Controversial Theories” bill<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>I’ve already told you about Senate Bill 966<\/a>, introduced by Sen. Dennis Baxley, that proposes allowing school districts to adopt their own sets of educational standards if they are equal to more more rigorous than the state’s educational standards. Among the suggestions for “more rigorous” science standards is: “Controversial theories and concepts must be taught in a factual, objective, and balanced manner.” We all know that means balancing evolution and climate change with some form of creationism and climate change denial.<\/p>\n

Now for the update. Baxley’s bill has a counterpart in the the other chamber: House Bill 825<\/a>. It’s a duplicate of the senate bill, which is bad news. With bills in both chambers, that increases the odds of the bills advancing. The House bill was introduced by Rep. Charlie Stone<\/a> from Ocala. I don’t know much about him or if he has any past run-ins with evolution or science education. If you know of anything, please tell us about it.<\/p>\n

One bright spot is that individuals and organizations are starting to mobilize against the bills. For instance, the Secular Coalition for Florida issued an Action Alert<\/a> that includes a form you can use to send emails to lawmakers.<\/p>\n

A new “Instructional Materials” bill<\/h3>\n

Next on our bad news list is the filing of a new bill that once again targets schools’ instructional materials: House Bill 827<\/a>. This bill is stuffed with lots of suggested changes and modifications to how instructional materials are chosen and challenged. It’s going to take a while to digest it all, but one thing of note is that it has some language that mirrors the “controversial theories” bill in that it pushes for “more rigorous” standards. Also, the bill was filed by Rep. Byron Donalds, the same guy who successfully ushered through last year’s bad instructional materials bill that is now law. It’s clear that he and Baxley are working closely with the creationist and climate change denying folks at the Florida Citizens Alliance. We need to follow this bill closely.<\/p>\n

Florida Constitution Revision Commission<\/h3>\n

And my final bit of sour news is that today the Commission considered Proposal 4<\/a>, which proposes to “Amend Section 3 of Article I of the State Constitution to remove the prohibition against using public revenues in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or any sectarian institution.” I explained why this is a bad idea in a previous post<\/a>. A hearing on the proposal was held this afternoon. If the vote was favorable (according to the analysis document) …<\/p>\n

If approved by the Constitution Revision Commission, the proposal will be placed on the ballot at the November 6, 2018, General Election. Sixty percent voter approval is required for adoption. If approved by the voters, the proposal will take effect on January 8, 2019.<\/p>\n

A similar proposal was submitted to voters in the 2012 General Election. The proposal received 44.5% of the vote and was not adopted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I got word that it was approved 7 to 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sincere apologies, folks. I have a laundry list of bad news to tell you about. Let’s get right to it. “Controversial Theories” bill I’ve already told you about Senate Bill 966, introduced by Sen. Dennis Baxley, that proposes allowing … 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":[33],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/scZNLl-2985","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3417,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3417","url_meta":{"origin":2985,"position":0},"title":"Florida Senator: schools need to teach ‘different worldviews’ on issues like evolution and climate change","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 29, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Senator Dennis Baxley filed Senate Bill 330 recently, a piece of legislation that puts the teaching of evolution and climate change in Florida public schools directly in his line of fire. Up until now, all we knew for sure was that he filed a bill that would allow school districts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2019"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2019","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=36"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3409,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3409","url_meta":{"origin":2985,"position":1},"title":"Update 1: “Controversial Theories” bill targeting evolution\/climate change referred to committees","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 26, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A bill filed in the Florida senate that could significantly impact science education if it becomes law is now referred to four committees. The bill would allow school districts to forgo the state academic standards if they want to adopt their own set of standards as long as they are\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3395,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3395","url_meta":{"origin":2985,"position":2},"title":"“Controversial Theories” bill returns to Florida senate","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A bill was pre-filed for the 2019 legislative session in the Florida senate that would impact the standards for all academic subjects, especially science. The bill proposes allowing school districts to adopt their own sets of educational standards if they are equal to or more rigorous than the state's educational\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2019"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2019","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=36"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3431,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3431","url_meta":{"origin":2985,"position":3},"title":"News Roundup 2\/9\/19: Sen. Baxley takes a pounding","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 9, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Several opinion pieces were published since my last news roundup just one week ago. Every one of them tears into state senator Dennis Baxley's bill that attacks so-called \"controversial theories\" in science classrooms. If you need a primer about this bill, check out our issues page:\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Controversial Theories\/Rigorous Standards\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bills 2019.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/eastman.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2993,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2993","url_meta":{"origin":2985,"position":4},"title":"Antiscience Bills Update 12\/8\/17","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a quick update on the bills we're watching in the Florida legislature. The legislative session doesn't actually kick off until Jan. 8 but bills can be pre-filed in preparation for the session and those bills can be assigned to committees and possibly even heard and voted on during committee\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=34"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2951,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2951","url_meta":{"origin":2985,"position":5},"title":"“Controversial theories” science education bill filed in Florida senate","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a live one. This past Friday Sen. Dennis Baxley filed a bill in our state legislature concerning public education. Senate Bill 966\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s purpose is to revise \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards; providing that such standards are the minimum baseline core content standards for K-12 public schools.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=34"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985"}],"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=2985"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2988,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions\/2988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}