"They Were Really Worried About Creationists And Oil Companies" - NM Dumps Shit Science Standards

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Ruszkowski, the education secretary, initially responded to critics by saying that his agency had crafted the proposed science standards—including the ones omitting evolution, human-caused global warming, and the age of the Earth—after hearing from “business groups, civic groups, teacher groups, superintendents.” (He declined to name those who helped shape the standards.) The process that went into developing the controversial standards, he added, was “how PED does business.”

However, in an interview with Mother Jones, a former PED official who helped develop the science standards contradicted Ruszkowski’s account. Lesley Galyas, who worked for four years as PED’s math and science bureau chief, said “one or two people” working “behind closed doors” had politicized New Mexico’s science standards. “They were really worried about creationists and the oil companies,” she said. In the end, she quit her job at the agency in protest of the changes sought by her bosses.

The pressure on the Public Education Department seems to have had an effect. In a Tuesday statement to the media, a department spokeswoman outlined several changes PED would make to New Mexico’s proposed standards that would bring them back into alignment with the NGSS. Those include restoring references to the 4.6-billion-year age of the Earth and to evolution; replacing a reference to the supposed “fluctuation in global temperatures over the past century” with a more accurate reference to the “rise in global temperatures over the past century”; and making a fourth change that more accurately reflects the facts of rising global temperatures and climate change.

Science education experts praised the education department’s rollback of its earlier anti-science proposals. But they cautioned that the department had not yet agreed to adopt the NGSS in full and that New Mexico students would be at a disadvantage if the state didn’t embrace the national standards.

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/new-mexico-reversal-science-education-standards-climate-