Ybarra to senators: ‘We need standards that reflect the reality of today’

Idaho Superintendent of Schools Sherri Ybarra told the Senate Education Committee this afternoon that the proposed science standards were developed by a 19-member committee that included science teachers, scientists and other. “There was representation from each region of the state,” Ybarra said. “There were a lot of experts on that panel. And they were very careful to go through 400 comments on top of the six hearings we had.”

Ybarra said her preference would be for the proposed standards to be accepted as-is. But she said she agreed to the House Education Committee’s decision to delete five of the 375 standards as a compromise, to get the standards through, and avoid reverting back to 2001 standards.

“The main difference in our Idaho-written standards by Idaho people is the expectation, in the words of last year’s teacher of the year, that science is a verb,” Ybarra told the senators. “These new standards take into consideration the act of doing science, rather than reading from a book and regurgitating some facts.”

She added, “We need standards that reflect the reality of today.”