Inequitable Foundations? Educational Equality in Evolution

Abstract

We assessed US middle and high school student understanding of national science standards -National Science Education Standards (NSES) for middle school students and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for high school students-for evolution with a nationally representative sample in diverse settings. We investigated whether students from a wide range of school type, socioeconomic status, and regions in the USA are being taught and are learning evolution equally. We found no significant differences in populations’ understanding of evolution in middle school, indicating that there is educational equality for this unit. For high school students, we found that best predictor for competence in evolution is a general comprehension of life science. Other demographic variables, such as school type and race/ethnicity, were investigated and shown to be statistically significant but small contributors to explaining variance in evolution standard scores for high school students. We also investigated gender equality in understanding of evolution concepts and found a statistically significant advantage to being female among high school students but not for middle school students.