{"id":342,"date":"2007-12-10T06:48:03","date_gmt":"2007-12-10T10:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=342"},"modified":"2008-08-05T20:34:23","modified_gmt":"2008-08-06T00:34:23","slug":"new-education-commissioner-stays-mum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=342","title":{"rendered":"New education commissioner stays mum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida has a new education commissioner, Eric J. Smith. The St. Petersburg Times interviewd him<\/a> and slipped in a question about the controversy over the new draft science standards. Smith essentially avoided the question, which is not a good sign. Perhaps he just doesn’t want to make waves before he’s even unpacked, but it would be nice for some folks to just stand up and say something like, “We’re going to teach science in science classes, and evolution is science. Period.” I guess I’m asking too much.<\/p>\n

One of the things that sort of popped up, I don’t want to say out of nowhere because it’s been there for a while, but it’s all of a sudden gotten hot, is the science standards. Have you had a chance to look at that and give your thoughts about it?<\/p>\n

Well, the science standards have been worked on for quite a while. It’s gotten a lot of media attention recently, and a lot of e-mail traffic recently. I think that is to be expected … whenever you develop standards. I would hope that the math standards, although they probably didn’t generate as much e-mail traffic, I certainly hope people looked at them as much, and language arts and so forth. They’re important for us. They’re what will drive the work of classroom teachers across the state. … I think we’re going to come to a close with some good recommendations as we enter the new calendar year. The board will certainly be very deliberative as they evaluate the input. … I really don’t have any comment in terms of some of the issues that have been raised recently. We’re still working through that. I think it’s too early for me to make any comment. We’re listening and I think we’ll have a good recommendation to the board when that time comes, probably in the January-February time frame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also, an editorial in the St. Petersburg Times<\/a> pulls no punches in slamming the anti-science crowd. It’s nice to see a newspaper like this one attack this issue so relentlessly, with all the news stories and columns it’s done lately,\u00c2\u00a0unlike so many other news outlets that seem reluctant to do more than\u00c2\u00a0surface-level reporting.<\/p>\n

When a member of the state Board of Education puts her religion before the educational needs of Florida students, she forfeits her standing as an education expert and should resign her post.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

[Donna] Callaway clearly doesn’t understand that there are no other scientifically grounded theories on the origins of life. Somehow Callaway, who is charged with making educational policy for the state, missed out on some basic education herself.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, she is not alone at the Department of Education. Charlie Carraway, director of instructional materials, dispatched e-mails using her job title and imploring people to “join me in keeping these standards from being approved.” A department spokesman said Carraway was “counseled” for her actions. Firing would be more in order.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Callaway and her supporters, including Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, who is likely to become House speaker in 2011, are probably going to make a lot of noise trying to dumb-down the standards for the study of science. Their ignorance should be ignored. Florida’s reputation as a place that prepares young people for the challenges of the future depends on it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida has a new education commissioner, Eric J. Smith. The St. Petersburg Times interviewd him and slipped in a question about the controversy over the new draft science standards. Smith essentially avoided the question, which is not a good sign. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-5w","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":486,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=486","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":0},"title":"It’s time to move on","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Setting aside the anti-science nonsense brewing in the Florida senate for a moment, let's think about the future. The new state science standards are approved. It's time for schools statewide to think about how to best implement them. The Bradenton Herald has a story on this subject. Now that the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1148,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1148","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":1},"title":"Commissioner responds","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"FSU physics professor Paul Cottle had sounded the alarm in the Tallahassee Democrat concerning Florida's leadership's unimpressive \"plans\" -- or lack thereof -- for improving our \"pretty much last in the nation\" standing in science education. Eric Smith, Florida commissioner of education, responded. I do commend Smith for taking the\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1148#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":769,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=769","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":2},"title":"Education Week on our standards","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Education Week reporter Sean Cavanagh has an article up about the newest twist in our state science standards epic. I spoke with Moore, who made it clear that he wasn't making any judgment about the scientific merits of the new standards. His only interest is what the law requires, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Science Standards"","block_context":{"text":"Our Science Standards","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=378","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":3},"title":"Miramar: the morning after","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"OK, so we got one nasty shocker out of the way last night when the Associated Press clued us in to Taylor County's anti-evolution resolution. Let's move on to see what's in store for us the day after the final public meeting about the new draft of the state science\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1169,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1169","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":4},"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":[]},{"id":1537,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1537","url_meta":{"origin":342,"position":5},"title":"Commissioner recommends National Science Standards","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In a report that Florida Commissioner of Education Gerard Robinson will be presenting (pdf document) to the Florida Board of Education this week, he recommends temporarily patching up our state's wounded science standards and then adopting the National Next Generation Science Standards in 2013-2014. In his own words: To address\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342"}],"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=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}