State standards are the single most influential documents in America’s education system. State education departments use them to provide guidance to each public K-12 school district and charter school as they create their own courses.
Yet too many state education departments have imposed state science standards drawing on sources such as the Next Generation Science Standards, which combine misguided pedagogical theory, low academic standards, politicized instruction, and training in activism. America at large has suffered from their success. Too many Americans have emerged from our schools ignorant of the basics of scientific knowledge, scientific reasoning, and scientific habits and character. We have too few scientists, engineers, and technicians—and too few citizens with the information to judge policy arguments based upon scientific questions.
The National Association of Scholars and Freedom in Education want to improve every aspect of American science instruction. We therefore provide the Franklin Standards, so that Americans can reclaim their scientific and technological heritage as a nation second to none of scientists, engineers, and informed citizens—much like Benjamin Franklin himself.
This event features Randy Wayne, Associate Professor at the School of Integrative Plant Science Plant Biology Section at Cornell University and specialist in quantum electrodynamic theories and orthodox interpretation of the photon; Nathan Gwinn, the Principal at St. Mary's Catholic School in Jackson; and Judith Curry, a climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Photo by Beck & Stone