Florida's proposed K-12 science standards face scrutiny ahead of December state board vote

Florida Education Commissioner Henry Mack used Wednesday's State Board of Education meeting to defend the state's proposed rewrite of its K-12 science standards, telling board members that evolution, climate science and sea level rise remain in the draft even as scientists, teachers and the state's largest teachers union say the document sidelines them. The board is expected to vote on the standards in December, Mack said, and the Department of Education has scheduled one more public listening session, in Orange County on Oct. 27.

The proposal is the first full rewrite of Florida's public school science standards since 2008. The standards set what students in every grade are expected to learn and shape the tests, lesson plans and textbooks used in classrooms across all 67 school districts, so the outcome of the December vote will reach nearly every public school student in the state.

What Mack told the board

Mack, who holds a master's degree in philosophy and was approved as education commissioner by the board this summer, framed the effort as an attempt to strip ideology out of science instruction rather than to remove scientific content, according to the Florida Phoenix, which covered the meeting.

"Our goal has always been straightforward. Develop standards that are clear, that are rigorous, that are grounded in the scientific method, that value evidence and rationality above ideology," Mack said.

He said he wanted to guard against what he called "scientism," which he described as the idea that disciplines such as philosophy, religion or history either reduce to science or offer no knowledge at all. He also told the board he wanted to guard against the idea that science is often settled, saying it is in the nature of science to keep questioning its assumptions.

Mack then addressed the criticism directly. "We are teaching climate science," he said. "I want to disabuse and dissuade people from believing the idea that we want to cull evolutionary biology or Charles Darwin from the standards. We don't want to do that. My kids are reading Charles Darwin. We want evolutionary biology in the standards, they are in the standards. We want climate science in the standards, it is in the standards. Sea level rise is in the standards."

He told the board chair that he found it remarkable that the effort had been, in his words, "co-opted into something that it's certainly not," and that he felt the need to correct the record. Mack has also said on social media that the rewrite is not an attempt at "smuggling a Sunday-school lesson into Biology," the Phoenix reported.

Board member Grazie Pozo Christie backed Mack's position. "Keeping science true, keeping science non-ideological, is important but also always remembering that the human part is in the end the important part, that science exists to promote the human, to promote human flourishing," she said.

What the draft says, and what critics say it leaves out

The department posted the proposed standards on its website in late September, shortly before its first listening session. Reviews of the draft by WUSF, the Orlando Sentinel and other outlets found that the word "evolution" is largely absent, including from the high school life science standards, and that the phrase "climate change" does not appear in the published review documents.

The 2008 standards gave evolution a central place, describing it as the fundamental concept underlying all of biology, according to the Sentinel. Florida's current standards also require teaching about human-caused climate change in several high school electives, including Earth science, marine science and environmental science, WUSF reported.

The proposed draft does refer to related ideas. It mentions weather and climate, climate systems and climate impacts on biodiversity, according to WUSF, and middle school standards still refer to natural selection. In defending the draft, a department spokesperson pointed to topics such as evidence for common ancestry and change over time, and human impacts on natural systems, the Sentinel reported. The draft describes human influence on the planet in terms of "anthropogenic activities" affecting Earth's systems rather than naming human-caused climate change.

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a national group that defends the teaching of evolution and climate science, told the Sentinel he could find little to praise. "I would like to say something nice about the new standards, but I can't," Branch said. Beyond the treatment of climate change and evolution, Branch argued that many of the proposed units amount to trivia built around memorizing definitions, and he criticized the sheer number of high school benchmarks, close to 1,000 by the Sentinel's account.

At the first listening session, held Sept. 29 at Armwood High School in Seffner, teachers from Pinellas and Hillsborough counties raised concerns that key topics were missing, WUSF reported. Patricia Duncan, a senior education manager at the department, told educators afterward that leaving out certain topics or words was not intentional and encouraged them to submit feedback through the department's website.

The teachers union weighs in

The Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union, issued a statement after Wednesday's meeting calling for more time and more public access to the process.

"Florida's revision of K-12 science standards must be driven by research and scientific evidence, not state politicians' ideological or religious beliefs," the union said. "When educators are forced to teach outside established science, students receive an incomplete, inaccurate education and miss the facts, critical thinking skills, and knowledge they need to succeed, placing them at a disadvantage."

The union also took aim at the format of the public hearings. "With over 1,000 pages and hundreds of benchmarks, public discussion cannot be reduced to 90-second soundbites or limited to in-person town halls," the statement said, urging the department to extend the review period and add more virtual town halls.

The Florida context

The fight over the science standards comes after several years in which climate change has been pulled back from Florida law and classroom materials. In 2024, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that struck most references to climate change from state law, the Sentinel noted. That bill was sponsored by Bobby Payne, then a state lawmaker and now a member of the Florida Public Service Commission. A WUSF and Hechinger Report investigation also found that in the summer of 2024 the state asked textbook publishers to water down information about the effects of climate change.

The 2008 standards were themselves adopted after a heated public debate over evolution and creationism. The current rewrite began in late 2024, when teacher experts started reviewing the existing standards, and workgroups drafted the new version in 2025, according to Central Florida Public Media.

For Florida, the stakes on climate science are not abstract. The state has more coastline than any other in the continental United States, and sea level rise, stronger storms and flooding already shape local budgets, insurance costs and building rules from the Keys to the Panhandle. Branch told the Sentinel it was ironic that standards written for a state so exposed to the effects of climate change would not name human-made climate change.

The public comment schedule

The department has billed its outreach as a statewide listening tour. The sessions held so far and the one remaining are listed below.

Mack made a point of promoting the Orange County session on Wednesday. "I may regret this at the end of the day, but I mean it when I say it," he said, before inviting the entire state to Orange County for a listening session with him. He said he would welcome an open dialogue about the future of science education, as well as nutrition and health education.

Written comments can also be submitted through the department's standards review website, where the proposed standards are posted.

What's next

After the Oct. 27 session, the department is expected to bring a final version of the standards to the State Board of Education for a vote in December. Whether that version restores the explicit terms evolution and climate change, as many commenters have asked, is the central question heading into the vote.

If adopted, the standards would not reach classrooms right away. They would be phased in over several years, with kindergarten through second grade starting in the 2028-29 school year and older grade levels in 2029-30, according to WUSF. Teacher training would begin before then, and new standards typically drive later changes to state tests and the textbooks districts are allowed to buy.