Synposis of Current Situation in Georgia
25th September 2005
- 12/05 Cobb County case to be heard before 11th circuit appeals court.
- 5/24/05 Stickers are removed from textbooks in Cobb County at an estimated cost of $25,000 as the County continues to wait for its appeal.
- 2/18/05 Appeals Court calls for mediation to determine when stickers will be removed from books.
- 1/17/05 Cobb County Board of Education voted to appeal the U.S. District Court ruling.
- 1/13/05 U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled today that Cobb County’s school board had violated the constitutional ban on the separation of church and state when it put the disclaimers on biology books in 2002.
- 11/8/04 Six Cobb County parents have brought a suit in Federal court to remove the stickers from Biology textbooks. For more information on the stickers see the News Archive. Closing arguments have been heard. The judge’s decision is being awaited.
- 7/13/04 The changes to the Science curriculum has been approved. Thanks to pressure from parents, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jimmy Carter, and GCISE, evolution and other AAAS benchmarks are included in the new curriculum.
- 5/13/04 The new Georgia Performance Standards for the school science curriculum have been released and are available for viewing at http://georgiastandards.org/science.asp
- The period for online comments on the curriculum will end June 10. Go to http://www.georgiastandards.org/science.asp to voice your opinion.
- as of 2/22/04 The State Board of Education re-inserted the sections of the AAAS standards related to evolution and the age of the earth that were initially deleted. State officials also agreed to consider reinserting other scientic theories that were dropped such as the Big-Bang theory for the origin of the universe. The revised standards are available to view at http://www.glc.k12.ga.us/spotlight/gps2.htm or at http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/curriculum/instruction/qcc/portal.asp
A comparison of the Georgia teaching standards to the original AAAS standards was made by GCISE member Reed Cartwright. You can see the comparison at: http://www.arches.uga.edu/~rac/gabiostds.html (updated 2/27/04)
- as of 2/12/04 The State Board of Education is in the process of revising the curriculum for elementary and secondary schools. The standards for science education were based on benchmarks established by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). However, there were important key ommissions. The most blatant was that the word “evolution” was replaced with “Biological changes over time”. Other key scientific concepts such as the age of the earth, plate tectonics, and the effect of humans on the environment were also dropped. Thanks to pressure from GCISE and other scientific and education organizations, as well as the general public, the State School Superintent, Kathy Cox, agreed to restore the word evolution, but not the other missing concepts.