The Fordham Foundation, an organization that carries out research on elementary and secondary education reform, has just completed an analysis of state science standards. This particular study does not evaluate actual performance, but only the stated educational goals in each state; this is a measure of how good their standards documents are. There is a state-by-state breakdown, with each state given a letter grade on the quality of their standards. I know you're itching to know how your state has done, so the shortcut is to go to the Panda's Thumb, where they have a table of the state grades. It's good to get an A (and a fair number of states have done well), not so good to get an F (15 states got failing grades). There's also a ranking, from 0 (abominable) to 3 (sublime) for each state's treatment of the subject of evolution.

Minnesota did OK. We got a B overall, and a 2 for our treatment of evolution. The criticisms are reasonable, and seem to mainly target some softness in the wording and most worrisome, some weakness in providing an evidence-based foundation that gets worse later in high school. On the good side, though, Minnesota improved their rankings since the last evaluation in 2000 (oops; MReap, who was on the committee, says we actually went down), despite the efforts of Cheri Yecke and her cabal; if they had had their way, we'd probably have a C or worse.

Our biology programs get a mixed review.

Life sciences are handled reasonably well, with a fair distribution of content over the subdisciplines of biology. Material on the existence and properties of fossils starts in grade 5. The term evolution appears explicitly in grade 7, albeit without, yet, the evidentiary underpinnings most important in the contemporary discipline. This continues in high school, but there it thins even further. The molecular, development, and population-genetic components of modern theory are little in evidence. It is not as though they are too obscure to figure in a good high school biology program. In any event, there is no evidence so far in Minnesota's standards of effort to weaken evolutionary biology.

So no serious damage has been done, but there is much room for improvement.

Here's a map of the country illustrating all the states whose standards got worse since the last assessment. That's a fairly bleak picture—look at all those black states. Remember that standards are only the start of a program of implementation, so digging yourself into a hole at that point is not a good idea.

They also provide a map of the quality of just the evolution component of the science standards. Look at that nasty swath of marginal and failed standards across the South and up through the central and mountain states…Bush country! Being in the South clearly isn't automatic damnation, though—South Carolina and Georgia did very well.

That white hole in the middle of the map is Kansas, which was on its way to earning a C for its science standards until the new fundie gang took over the school board and mangled the standards, reducing their grade to an F.

The early warnings have been justified. Kansas has adopted standards whose treatment of evolutionary material has been radically compromised. The effect transcends evolution, however. It now makes a mockery of the very definition of science. The grade for Kansas is accordingly reduced to "F."