National Survey Shows Significant Improvements in Evolution Education

A recent survey from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) and Penn State University found that public high school biology teachers are more likely to teach evolution as settled science today than they were twelve years ago. The 2019 survey of 752 public high school biology teachers, conducted by Eric Plutzer, a political scientist and polling expert at Penn State University, was designed to replicate a similar national survey that Plutzer and his colleagues had done in 2007. Results from the survey were recently published by Plutzer and NCSE’s Glenn Branch and Ann Reid in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach. The survey showed that the proportion of US secondary-school biology teachers who “present creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to evolution” dropped from 32 percent in 2007 to 18 percent in 2019. The amount of class time spent on human evolution increased by almost 90 percent during this period. NCSE’s Executive Director Ann Reid wrote in a column for Nature that the results “show a rise not only in the time spent teaching evolution, but also in the proportion of educators emphasizing the scientific consensus.” The average number of hours spent on teaching evolution increased by 25 percent between 2007 and 2019. The percentage of high school biology teachers who emphasized the scientific consensus on evolution while giving no credence to creationism increased from 51 percent in 2007 to 67 percent ...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news