State-By-State Grades on Teaching Evolution

In The Missing Link, I took the stand that all students need to learn about evolution and that creationism/ID is not appropriate for teaching in public schools. That continues to be my stand. All students need to understand the piles and piles of evidence for evolution and how scientists explain evolution limiting themselves to natural processes. In The Link, though, I focused on how to do that in a way that is sensitive to and honors students who come to evolution with deep religious objections.

My UAB colleague, Rob Angus, just passed along to me a recently published analysis of how each U.S. state scored on the teaching of evolution. The title is Why Science Standards are Important to a Strong Science
Curriculum and How States Measure Up, and it's available free on-line. The graphic here is from that article, and the image gives the quick-view of the results. There's progress here with several Southern states improving their ratings. But, children in many states still don't appear to be getting the opportunity to even examine evolution at all.