First in the Nation: Maryland Requires Students to be Environmentally Literate
On Tuesday, Maryland became the first state in the nation to require students be environmentally literate in order to graduate from high school.
As a result of what environmental education supporters are calling an historic vote, the Maryland State Board of Education issued a ruling that all public schools must provide students with a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary environmental education. School systems will have flexibility about how they incorporate lessons on the environment into core subjects like science and social studies, but they must align with state standards.
“I am thrilled about the environmental literacy requirement for students to be able to graduate in Maryland,” said Dr. Sarah Haines, Director of the Center for Science & Mathematics Education in the Department of Biological Sciences at Towson University, and Maryland Project Learning Tree State Coordinator. “The environment will be one of the dominant issues and challenges of the 21st century. Children need to learn about and understand how our health and daily lives depend on the environment, so they are well-prepared for the future they will inherit.”
Sarah is serving on Maryland Governor O’Malley’s Partnership for Children and Nature that pushed for the graduation requirement as a way to improve and expand environmental education in the state. She is a member of the Environmental Literacy & Standards subgroup that is writing the environmental literacy standards and matching them to the curriculum at each grade level. Another workgroup is developing guidelines to provide school systems with guidance and support for implementation. The draft Maryland Environmental Literacy Standards are available for review at www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/programs/environment/tk/els.
Project Learning Tree is already well positioned to help schools meet this new requirement through its high-quality environmental education curriculum materials and professional development for educators. PLT’s curriculum materials are currently correlated with Maryland’s academic standards for science, math, social studies, and language arts, and will be a perfect fit for the new environmental literacy standards.
Maryland has paved the way for the rest of the nation to increase environmental and outdoor learning. Currently 48 other states are considering similar environmental literacy graduation requirements, a sign of the growing widespread support for environmental education that is helping to grow environmental consciousness and stewardship in the next generation.
Read the Chesapeake Bay Foundation press release.
Kayaking in the Chespeake Bay, photo credit Flickr's mzarro.
