{"id":3292,"date":"2018-06-01T14:23:20","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T18:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3292"},"modified":"2018-06-01T14:23:20","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T18:23:20","slug":"blatant-creationism-in-schools-without-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3292","title":{"rendered":"Blatant creationism in “Schools Without Rules”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orlando Sentinel has been running an excellent investigative series called “Schools Without Rules” about private schools that accept public money in the form of various types of scholarships (otherwise known as vouchers). The articles have been documenting “problems in some scholarship schools, including campuses that hired teachers without degrees and with criminal records, forged fire and health inspection forms, and faced eviction midyear because they failed to pay their bills.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The latest installment is right up our alley: curriculum, especially for science. The headline gets the point across:\u00c2\u00a0Schools Without Rules: Private schools’ curriculum downplays slavery, says humans and dinosaurs lived together<\/a>. I’m quoted toward the end:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That was just plain-old, misguided, bad, horrible science, talking about dinosaurs and humans living together,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Brandon Haught, a science teacher at University High School in Volusia and member of the advocacy group Florida Citizens for Science, who also reviewed the materials.<\/p>\n

Haught said all the texts, compared with what he uses in his public high school, seemed to downplay \u00e2\u20ac\u0153actually doing some science.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d They also disregard a key point of science \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that not all answers are known, that there are more discoveries to be had.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That quote was just a snippet from my interview that lasted more than an hour. However, the video that goes along with the story has some additional information not in the print version and features me talking about the use of the word “theory” (at about 5:19) and explaining the potential impact of such horrible curriculum (at about 7:42). Make sure you take the time to watch it. It’s the one right by the headline. There’s another video further down on the story’s page that gives a good overview of the entire series of articles.<\/p>\n

Also accompanying the main story is a sidebar story focused on the companies that supply the curriculum to the private schools:\u00c2\u00a0Who is behind Christian curriculum companies that supply lessons to Florida’s voucher-funded private schools?<\/a><\/p>\n

Abeka, along with the Bob Jones University-affiliated BJU Press and Accelerated Christian Education Inc., is among the most popular curricula used by Christian schools that take part in Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s $1 billion voucher program, which pays for children from low-income families or those with special needs to attend private schools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A have a few books from these companies that I used as reference when writing my book, Going Ape: Florida’s Battles over Evolution in the Classroom<\/a>. I wrote about voucher-accepting schools in chapter eight. That’s part of the reason the Sentinel reporters interviewed me; I’m already familiar with this stuff. Yes, the books used in some private schools’ science classrooms are awful! And our tax dollars are paying for them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Orlando Sentinel has been running an excellent investigative series called “Schools Without Rules” about private schools that accept public money in the form of various types of scholarships (otherwise known as vouchers). The articles have been documenting “problems in … 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":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-R6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3304,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3304","url_meta":{"origin":3292,"position":0},"title":"More reactions to Schools Without Rules article","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last weekend the Orlando Sentinel ran an article that's part of their Schools Without Rules series that investigates private schools that accept public money via various scholarships (aka vouchers):\u00c2\u00a0Private schools' curriculum downplays slavery, says humans and dinosaurs lived together. In a previous post I highlighted some reactions to the article,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3299,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3299","url_meta":{"origin":3292,"position":1},"title":"Reactions to Schools Without Rules article","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Orlando Sentinel published an article a few days ago highlighting the atrocious curriculum some voucher-accepting private schools use:\u00c2\u00a0Private schools' curriculum downplays slavery, says humans and dinosaurs lived together. Now we're starting to see reactions to the story. First there is Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano writing about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3520,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3520","url_meta":{"origin":3292,"position":2},"title":"Florida Citizens for Science: Reject Senate Bill 48 and its \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Education Savings Accounts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 7, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spring and that means it is time for the annual assault on Florida public schools by the powers that be in Tallahassee. For the third year in a row Governor Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran have crafted a bill that will divert even more taxpayer dollars to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2927,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2927","url_meta":{"origin":3292,"position":3},"title":"Another barrel of rotten apples","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Orlando Sentinel is publishing a three part series about Florida private schools raking in voucher money from the state despite some incredibly ugly problems at those schools. The first part ran today:\u00c2\u00a0Schools Without Rules: An Orlando Sentinel Investigation (Florida private schools rake in nearly $1 billion in state scholarships\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Antiscience nonsense"","block_context":{"text":"Antiscience nonsense","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=21"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1763,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1763","url_meta":{"origin":3292,"position":4},"title":"Florida tax dollars going to anti-science schools","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"We need to get the content of this Orlando Sentinel article out into the wider public view, so please share and blog and tweet about it as much as you can: Florida already funnels millions in tax dollars to religious schools. There are quite a few religious schools getting \"voucher\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1763#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1169,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1169","url_meta":{"origin":3292,"position":5},"title":"Should state money support bad science?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"An Orlando Sentinel article offers quite a bit of food for thought when it comes to state-financed tuition vouchers. This money is used to give parents the choice of sending their kids to public school or a private school. This leads to a very good question: is education quality the\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1169#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292"}],"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=3292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3294,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292\/revisions\/3294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}