By Barbara Forrest

Most people who have read the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act know that it seeks to undermine not just the teaching of evolution (although that is the primary target), but it also throws in “global warming” as something that teachers should allow students to “critically analyze” (along with the “origins of life” and “human cloning”). And most of our readers also know that Louisiana is still the only state with such a stupid law. Throughout the effort of the Louisiana Coalition for Science (LCFS) to stop this bill as it sped through the legislature, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) provided valuable advice and assistance. NCSE is a — no, it’s the — national clearinghouse for assistance in protecting the teaching of science. (Disclosure: I serve on NCSE’s Board of Directors — proudly). For more than a quarter-century, NCSE has come to the aid of parents, teachers, school administrators, and concerned citizens who needed help in fighting off creationist attacks on the teaching of evolution. Now the NCSE has responded to the growing number of attacks on the teaching of climate science.

NCSE is expanding its scope by launching a new climate change initiative to help protect the teaching of climate science in America’s public schools.

Here are some excerpts from NCSE’s press release:

A new initiative in the struggle for quality science education

Science education is under attack—again.

This time it’s under attack by climate change deniers, who ignore a mountain of evidence gathered over the last fifty years that the planet is warming and that humans are largely responsible. These deniers attempt to sabotage science education with fringe ideas, pseudoscience, and outright lies.

But the National Center for Science Education won’t let ‘em get away with it. . . .

In its initiative to defend climate change education, NCSE will:

* Help parents, teachers, and others fight the introduction of climate change/global warming denial and pseudoscience in the classroom.

* Act as a resource center to connect teachers, scientists, and policymakers with the best information available.

* Provide tools and support to ensure that climate change is properly and effectively taught in public schools.

* Aid those testifying before local and state boards of education, and before local, state, and federal legislative committees.

* Connect local activists with one another, and with scientists and other relevant experts.

To help carry out this new initiative, NCSE has brought in two experts:

* Dr. Peter Gleick, president and co-founder of The Pacific Institute, joins NCSE’s board of directors. Gleick is a noted hydroclimatologist, an internationally recognized water expert, and a MacArthur Fellow. Gleick’s research and writing address the critical connections between water and human health, the hydrologic impacts of climate change, sustainable water use, privatization and globalization, and international conflicts over water resources.

* Mark McCaffrey, a long-time climate literacy expert, joins NCSE as climate change programs and policy director. Previously at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), McCaffrey helped spearhead a number of climate and energy literacy programs, and the creation of the Climate Literacy & Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN), and testified before Congress about climate and environmental education.

It’s important to be clear about what NCSE will not do under this initiative: it will not address issues of policy or make policy recommendations. That is beyond the scope of this new effort.

What We Won’t Do

Climate change necessarily has consequences for policy on the local, state, national, and even global stages. Should something be done to counteract climate change? If so, what? Is slowing down climate change impossible, and should, therefore, efforts be directed toward mitigating and adapting to its effects? Such questions, although important, are beyond the scope of NCSE, which is primarily a science and science education organization, not a policy institute. Some of our topics may touch upon policy issues, but we will not take positions on, for example, the advantages or disadvantages of a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade policy. There is a broad range of solutions; NCSE’s position is that whatever solutions society decides upon, they should be based on sound science.

NCSE will assist in protecting the integrity of the way climate science is taught in public school science classes, just as it has helped protect the teaching of evolution.

NCSE is here to help! You can help us by informing us of any school, school district, or state policy that compromises the integrity of good science, whether the topic is evolution or climate change. We will do what we can to assist those at the grassroots level too. If you are, or know of, a teacher who is feeling pressure about evolution or climate change from parents, administrators, or members of the community, don’t hesitate to get in touch—we can help.

So, Louisiana citizens, please be alert to any attacks on the teaching of climate science in our public schools. Both the LCFS and the NCSE are here to help.

By Barbara Forrest      

OK, readers, who knows what these two pictures have in common?

Give up? OK, here’s the answer:  Both of these pictures are symbols of the screwed-up priorities of the state of Louisiana. On the left, we have a frame from the July 10, 2011, Doonesbury comic strip, which quite rightly ridicules the fact that (a) the state of Louisiana passed the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act in 2008 and (b) the state of Louisiana refused to repeal this law in 2011. In fact, the Senate Education Committee refused to allow SB 70, Sen. Karen Carter Peterson’s repeal bill, out of committee. Rather than voting against it outright, they just voted 5-1 to defer action on the bill, effectively killing it. Only Senator Yvonne Dorsey voted to send the bill to the Senate floor (thank you, Sen. Dorsey).

Now, to the picture on the right. This is the widely respected Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA. World-class scientists at PBRC are doing world-class research, especially on diabetes and obesity. Any scientists in the world could be proud to work here, especially in the new, four-story clinical research building that was just completed, that is, if they could be proud to work here if they could count on having some important stuff — like, say, furniture. On the same day that the Doonesbury cartoon appeared in the Baton Rouge Advocate, the paper also ran this story, “Cuts Hit Pennington,” on the front page.

Construction is ongoing for Pennington’s state-funded, $12 million imaging center building, but there is no timetable to equip or utilize the facility once it is finished in February.

The nutrition and chronic disease center currently finds itself in a state of limbo after going through a decade of growth and improving state support, only to be undercut by two years of state budget cuts that sliced its operating budget dollars by nearly 20 percent.

Only the first two of the four floors of this new facility are currently occupied, with the top two floors sitting empty for the foreseeable future. And PBRC scientists are now viewed outside the state as poachable. In fact, one scientist, Steven Smith, left last year because of the uncertainty surrounding PBRC’s future. And where do you think he went?

One of those top ‘poached’ scientists, Steven Smith left Pennington last year as the clinical research building was being completed to take over as the scientific director of the Burnham Medical Research Institute’s Translational Research Institute for Metabolism and Diabetes in Florida. He said the financial uncertainty and ‘state of limbo; were key factors in his decision to leave.

[See this article about Dr. Smith's hiring. See his Burnham web page.]

Florida, you say? Yes, Florida. Think about it this way. If you are going to be worried about hurricanes, you can just as well worry in a state that has invested $600 million to support your cutting-edge research. And if you’re a scientist at Pennington, you won’t even have to spend any time actually looking for another job. The poachers will come to you! That sounds like a terrific economic development strategy — for Florida.

Timothy Church, director of Pennington’s Preventive Medicine Laboratory, is understandably worried. He said that Pennington’s competitors don’t even have to hire “headhunters,” which can get expensive. If other scientific research centers need top talent, says Church, “You just go to the Pennington directory.” Hey, what a deal! That leaves the poacher-states with even more money to invest in scientific research! Church adds, in what surely has to be a competitor for understatement of the year, “When you’re not opening up new buildings, it’s not optimal.” (Sigh. Repeat sigh.)

So this is where we are in Louisiana, friends. We can’t furnish and staff the top two floors of the new Pennington clinical research building, but we still have a creationist law on the books. And we would have had yet another one if Senator Karen Carter Peterson had not stepped up to the plate to help us stop HB 580, which would have allowed local school boards to spend taxpayer dollars to buy as much supplemental creationist “educational” material as they wanted with little state oversight.

But look on the bright side. The Louisiana legislature passed another bill, which Gov. Jindal signed into law as Act 174, that lets us put television screens in the front seats of our cars. (Don’t worry — we can’t watch while the car is moving.)

By Barbara Forrest

The Baton Rouge Advocate has a great editorial today about Rep. Frank Hoffman’s HB 580, about which the LCFS sent out a press release [pdf] and a detailed analysis [pdf] on June 13. (See LCFS post, June 10, 2011.) The Advocate has it right: this bill does an end run around the established textbook review and adoption process that the Louisiana Family Forum has been trying unsuccessfully to thwart since 2002.

For readers who need some background, here is the Advocate’s June 17, 2011, article. Here is one in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on June 16. Gambit also has a June 17 article.

We quote here a brief excerpt from the Advocate editorial with the recommendation that readers go to the website and read “Our Views: An End Run on Textbooks.” It is the newspaper’s lead editorial today.

Hell hath no fury like a legislator humiliated by a high school student. . . .  [Note: "Legislator" = Rep. Frank Hoffman. "High school student" = Zack Kopplin.]

He [Hoffman] filed House Bill 580 that tinkers — extensively — with BESE’s long-accepted powers over textbook selection. The tangled language of the bill, already passed by the House, appears to give local school boards the option of adopting different texts.

Given Hoffmann’s record promoting creationist nostrums, this is an invitation to boards to reject standard texts in favor of others. . . .

We urge the Senate to reject the Hoffmann bill and leave well enough alone. Louisiana’s education challenges aren’t made any easier by turning school texts into propaganda tracts from narrow-minded interest groups.

We refer readers again to the LCFS analysis of HB 580 [pdf]. We will not say “enjoy.”

The Louisiana Coalition for Science is pleased to post (in alphabetic order) the following statements and letters of support [pdf] for the repeal of the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008.

• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (added on May 6, 2011)
• American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)
• American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB)
• American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB)
• Clergy Letter Project (added on May 7, 2011)
• Louisiana Association of Biology Educators (LABE)
• Louisiana Science Teachers Association (LSTA)
• National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT)
• Paul Gross and Lawrence Lerner statements
• Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), cosigned by Society of Systematic Biologists and American Society of Naturalists

Along with Zack Kopplin, we thank all of these organizations and individuals for their support of the repeal effort. Should we receive additional letters and statements, we will update this post.

For readers who were not able to attend the rally at the Capitol today, Zack has posted his  YouTube video.

WAFB also ran a video news segment about the rally. Earlier in the day, Zack was interviewed on the Jim Engster Show on WRKF. Darrell White of the Louisiana Family Forum was included in this interview.

In addition to Zack, who delivered an address to attendees, Dr. Ian Binns spoke on behalf of the Louisiana Coalition for Science. Dr. Kevin Carman, Dean of the College of Science at Louisiana State University, also offered remarks. The Louisiana Coalition for Science thanks both Dr. Binns and Dr. Carman for participating.

Most of all, we thank Zack Kopplin for taking on the task of seeking repeal of the stealth creationist law that should never have been passed. The Louisiana legislature should care enough about what the rest of our fellow Americans think of our state by getting it off the books. But most of all, they should care enough about the education of young people like Zack, who has done what every responsible adult in Louisiana should be doing.

Thank you, Zack.

By Barbara Forrest

On Thursday, April 28, Zack Kopplin will hold a rally at the Capitol in Baton Rouge in support of SB 70, a bill sponsored by Senator Karen Carter Peterson (thank you Senator Peterson!) to repeal the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act, which was passed in 2008. Zack has a Facebook page with information about the rally, and he has information about the repeal effort at Repealcreationism.com. On April 22, Zack was interviewed by WBRZ in Baton Rouge. This young man is doing what every responsible adult in the state of Louisiana should be doing — petitioning the legislature to correct the mistake they made in 2008 by letting themselves be cowed by the threat of political hardball by the Louisiana Family Forum.

The legislative session begins on Monday, April 25. Zack and the Louisiana Coalition for Science are asking concerned citizens to begin calling members of the Senate Education Committee NOW and urge them to vote SB 70 out of committee.  Let’s send this bill out for an “up or down” vote in 2011, as the committee did with SB 733 in 2008. That’s only fair, right? Then call your respective House and Senate members and urge them to support SB 70.

We also need people to turn out for the rally on April 28. Take an early lunch break if you live in Baton Rouge and run down to the Capitol. Bring friends and supporters. There will be a table in the lobby of the Capitol, and concerned citizens can personally lobby their elected representatives while they are there. Lobbying will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

We are also asking organizations in Louisiana to adopt resolutions or sign petitions, which we have made available here for convenience, scan them, and pdf them back to us via e-mail, and we will make sure that they are distributed to legislators. Citizens can also catch up on the news about the repeal effort here.

Zack has done the heavy lifting in this effort. He has sacrificed his time and energy to do what the adults should have done in 2008 and should be doing now. He has obtained the support of 42 of the leading lights of the scientific world — 42 Nobel Prize winners.

The Louisiana Coalition for Science has helped by providing information and resources. The ball is now in your court, fellow citizens.

The following letter has been sent to the Louisiana legislature and to Gov. Bobby Jindal. (Reproduced from Repealcreationism.com, posted by Zack Kopplin, April 21, 2011)

42 Nobel Laureates Call for a Repeal of the LSEA

Dear Members of the Louisiana Legislature,

As Nobel Laureates in various scientific fields, we urge you to repeal the misnamed and misguided Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) of 2008. This law creates a pathway for creationism and other forms of non-scientific instruction to be taught in public school science classrooms.

The warning flags many of us raised about this law have now been proven justified. Members of the Livingston Parish School Board recently announced their desire to include creationism in the science curriculum for the 2011-2012 school year. Clearly, the LSEA is well understood by Louisiana school administrators and public officials as having created an avenue to incorporate the teaching of creationism into science curricula in Louisiana schools.

Louisiana’s students deserve to be taught proper science rather than religion presented as science. Science offers testable, and therefore falsifiable, explanations for natural phenomena. Because it requires supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, creationism does not meet these standards. Seventy-two Nobel Laureates addressed these issues in 1987 in an amicus brief in the Edwards vs. Aguillard U.S. Supreme Court case, which originated in Louisiana after the passage of a 1981 creationist law:

“Science is devoted to formulating and testing naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. It is a process for systematically collecting and recording data about the physical world, then categorizing and studying the collected data in an effort to infer the principles of nature that best explain the observed phenomena. Science is not equipped to evaluate supernatural explanations for our observations; without passing judgment on the truth or falsity of supernatural explanations, science leaves their consideration to the domain of religious faith. Because the scope of scientific inquiry is consciously limited to the search for naturalistic principles, science remains free of religious dogma and is thus an appropriate subject for public-school instruction. . . .

The grist for the mill of scientific inquiry is an ever-increasing body of observations that give information about underlying ‘facts.’ Facts are the properties of natural phenomena. The scientific method involves the rigorous, methodical testing of principles that might present a naturalistic explanation for those facts. To be a legitimate scientific ‘hypothesis,’ an explanatory principle must be consistent with prior and present observations and must remain subject to continued testing against future observations. An explanatory principle that by its nature cannot be tested is outside the realm of science.

The process of continuous testing leads scientists to accord a special dignity to those hypotheses that accumulate substantial observational or experimental support. Such hypotheses become known as scientific ‘theories.’ If a theory successfully explains a large and diverse body of facts, it is an especially ‘robust’ theory. If it consistently predicts new phenomena that are subsequently observed, it is an especially ‘reliable’ theory. Even the most robust and reliable theory, however, is tentative. A scientific theory is forever subject to reexamination and — as in the case of Ptolemaic astronomy — may ultimately be rejected after centuries of viability. . . .

A thorough scientific education should introduce these concepts about the hierarchy of scientific ideas. Such an introduction would permit the student to relate the substantive findings of science to the process of science. Just as children should understand and appreciate the scientific theories that offer the most robust and reliable naturalistic explanations of the universe, children should also understand and appreciate the essentially tentative nature of science. In an ideal world, every science course would include repeated reminders that each theory presented to explain our observations of the universe carries this qualification: ‘as far as we know now, from examining the evidence available to us today.’ . . .

Scientific education should accurately portray the current state of substantive scientific knowledge. Even more importantly, scientific education should accurately portray the premises and processes of science. Teaching religious ideas mislabeled as science is detrimental to scientific education: It sets up a false conflict between science and religion, misleads our youth about the nature of scientific inquiry, and thereby compromises our ability to respond to the problems of an increasingly technological world.”

Scientific knowledge is crucial to twenty-first-century life. Biological evolution is foundational in many fields, including biomedical research and agriculture. It aids us in understanding, for example, how to fight diseases like HIV and how to grow plants that will survive in different environments. Because science plays such a large role in today’s world and because our country’s economic future is dependent upon the United States’ retaining its competitiveness in science, it is vital that students have a sound education about major scientific concepts and their applications.

We strongly urge that the Louisiana Legislature repeal this misguided law. Louisiana students deserve an education that will allow them to compete with their peers across the country and the globe.

Sincerely,

Nobel Laureates

Sir Harold Kroto, Chemistry, 1996

Sir Richard Roberts, Physiology or Medicine, 1993

Elias J. Corey, Chemistry, 1990

Steven Weinberg, Physics, 1979

Herbert Kroemer, Physics, 2000

Roderick MacKinnon, Chemistry, 2003

Douglas D. Osheroff, Physics, 1996

Alan J. Heeger, Chemistry, 2000

Robert Curl, Chemistry, 1996

Kurt Wüthrich, Chemistry, 2002

Martin Chalfie, Chemistry, 2008

Jack W. Szostak, Physiology or Medicine, 2009

Phillip A. Sharp, Physiology or Medicine, 1993

Craig C. Mello, Physiology or Medicine, 2006

Stanley Prusiner, Physiology or Medicine, 1997

Roger Y. Tsien, Chemistry, 2008

David Gross, Physics, 2004

Roger Kornberg, Chemistry, 2006

Robert Howard Grubbs, Chemistry, 2005

Sidney Altman, Chemistry, 1989

Jerome I. Friedman, Physics, 1990

Thomas A. Steitz, Chemistry, 2009

Venki Ramakrishnan, Chemistry, 2009

Horst Stormer, Physics, 1998

Peter C. Doherty, Physiology or Medicine, 1996

Gerhard Ertl, Chemistry, 2007

Richard Schrock, Chemistry, 2005

John L. Hall, Physics, 2005

Riccardo Giacconi, Physics, 2002

Wolfgang Ketterle, Physics, 2001

Jack Steinberger, Physics, 1988

Robert C. Richardson, Physics, 1996

Frank Wilczek, Physics, 2004

Alexei Abrikosov, Physics, 2003

Roy Glauber, Physics, 2005

Susumu Tonegawa, Physiology or Medicine, 1987

Anthony J. Leggett, Physics, 2003

Russell Hulse, Physics, 1993

Eric Wieschaus, Physiology or Medicine, 1995

Rudolph A. Marcus, Chemistry, 1992

William D. Phillips, Physics, 1997

Dudley Herschbach, Chemistry, 1986

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / Louisiana Coalition for Science  / http://lasciencecoalition.org

Download press release [pdf]

Louisiana Coalition for Science Supports SB 70 to Repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act

Baton Rouge, LA, April 18, 2011 — In solidarity with Baton Rouge Magnet High School senior Zachary Kopplin’s effort to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (www.repealcreationism.com), the Louisiana Coalition for Science supports Senator Karen Carter Peterson’s bill, SB 70, which will repeal the law in its entirety. In the interest of Louisiana public school students, the legislature should pass the bill and Gov. Jindal should sign it. (See http://www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/byinst.asp?sessionid=11RS&billid=SB70&doctype=ALL.)

Under the guise of promoting “critical thinking,” a creationist code term, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) permits public school science teachers to use creationist materials to promote “critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

The LSEA was written by the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a Focus on the Family affiliate that promotes creationism as part of its mission “to present biblical principles in the centers of influence.” The LFF partnered with the Discovery Institute (DI), a Seattle, Washington, think tank that promotes intelligent design creationism nationwide. DI helped write the LSEA to reflect its “Model Academic Freedom Statute on Evolution,” a stealth creationism statute that DI has promoted in almost a dozen states since 2008. So far, no other state has adopted such legislation. (See DI’s model statute at www.academicfreedompetition.com/freedom.php.)

The LSEA has had negative effects both on Louisiana and on public school science education policy.

• In August 2008, the president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology called on scientific societies to boycott states that pass such legislation. On February 5, 2009, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology informed Gov. Jindal that it would hold its 2011 meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, rather than New Orleans and that they will not return to Louisiana while the LSEA remains in effect. (See www.sicb.org/resources/LouisianaLetterJindal.pdf.)
• In January 2009, the LFF persuaded the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to delete a crucial prohibition against “materials that teach creationism or intelligent design or that advance the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind” from Bulletin 741, the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, which implements the LSEA at the parish level. Consequently, school districts have no clear guidelines prohibiting creationist materials in science classes. Teachers can use anything they want until they get caught. (For the example of Danny Pennington, former West Monroe High School biology teacher, see National Public Radio, “Louisiana Law Protects Evolution Skeptics in Class,” February 13, 2009, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100585622.)
• In September 2009, the LFF influenced BESE’s Bulletin 741 policy concerning citizen complaints. The policy stacks the review procedure in favor of creationists when parents or concerned citizens file complaints about creationist materials used in science classes. The policy also undermines Department of Education staff experts. (See Louisiana Coalition for Science, http://lasciencecoalition.org/2009/09/30/creationists-dictate-bese-policy/)
• In fall 2010, the LFF tried but failed to block state approval of new biology textbooks for public schools. Nonetheless, LFF Executive Director Rev. Gene Mills vowed to “make crystal clear to superintendents all over Louisiana” that schools are not bound by BESE’s approval of the new textbooks (Rev. Gene Mills, End of Week newsletter, December 10, 2010).
• In July 2010, invoking the LSEA, the Livingston Parish School Board instructed staff to study using the LSEA to add creationism to the science curriculum for the 2011-2012 academic year. This proves that school boards understand the LSEA as a creationist law. (See “School Board Might OK Teaching Creationism,” Baton Rouge Advocate, July 24 2010, www.2theadvocate.com/news/99153999.html?showAll=y&c=y.)
• The March 15, 2011, Tangipahoa Parish School Board minutes note that board member Sandra Bailey-Simmons told the Curriculum Committee that “Retired Judge Darrell White has requested to come speak to the Committee concerning the Science Education Act.” (See www.tangischools.org/BDMinutes/2011/Board%20Minutes%2003-15-11.pdf.) White, an LFF operative, helped promote the LSEA. The April 17, 2011, Hammond, LA, Sunday Star reports that the board’s April 19 meeting will consider “Curriculum . . . committee reports [that] include discussion about evolutionism verse [sic] creationism within the science department” (emphasis added). This information shows that the LFF is using the LSEA to promote flat-out creationism, as LSEA opponents predicted in 2008.

Concerned citizens must call Senate Education Committee members and their respective House and Senate representatives and ask them to vote in favor of SB 70.

* Contacts: (1) Barbara Forrest, barbara.forrest@gmail.com/985-974-4244 (2) Patsye Peebles, patsye.peebles@gmail.com

Donald Aguillard with Susan Epperson (photo by Eugenie Scott)

By Barbara Forrest

One of the hallmarks of good citizenship is stepping up to correct a wrong against children. Louisiana has such a citizen in the person of Dr. Donald W. Aguillard, who was the lead plaintiff in Aguillard v. Louisiana, the case that eventually produced the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987). In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the teaching of creationism in public school science classes is unconstitutional. Louisiana parents, students, and science teachers owe him a debt of gratitude.

Most Louisianians probably have no idea what Dr. Aguillard did on behalf of public school science education in the early 1980s. So it is very nice to see that the National Center for Science Education has featured him in the January-February 2011 issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education (RNCSE). He is pictured here along with Susan Epperson, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court’s first ruling on creationism, Epperson v. Arkansas (1968). Readers can download the article by Randy Moore, “People and Places: Don Aguillard,” here [pdf].

Dr. Aguillard is now the superintendent of the St. Mary Parish School District. If you know him, say “thank you” for what he did for the children of Louisiana thirty years ago.

By Barbara Forrest

The Louisiana Coalition for Science is very pleased that the National Association of Biology Teachers has endorsed Zack Kopplin’s campaign to repeal the creationist Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008. We wish to thank them publicly for their letter of support [pdf].

The National Association of Biology Teachers fully endorses the campaign to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act. The National Association of Biology Teachers joined other individuals and organizations to oppose the passage of this legislation on the grounds that it intentionally utilized language that clearly allows non-scientific explanations for topics such as evolution, the origins of life, and climate change, to be introduced into the classroom as science. The National Association of Biology Teachers affirms that teaching biology must be in a standards-based instructional framework, upholding scientific integrity and the right to teach accurate and current science without penalty of political or religious influences on content. The Louisiana Science Education Act can and does confuse students about the true nature of science by allowing classroom materials to bypass approval from the state’s science education standards committees for use in the classroom. Students are best served when scientific integrity is maintained in the science classroom. As an organization dedicated to biology education, we are honored to join the effort to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act.