PERRY: The science behind Colorado state school board being dumber than a fifth grader

It may be true that you’re not smarter than a fifth grader, but chances are pretty good you’re a helluva lot smarter than the majority of the Colorado state school board. At least when it comes to science.

Actually, when it comes to that subject, the whole country pretty much sucks. We’ve all seen the nightmarish stories about one-quarter of Americans thinking that the Sun circles the Earth.  Or that a third of us believe that humans and dinosaurs lived on the planet at the same time. These are people who drive heavy machinery. They race to a crime scene armed with a gun and a police car. They handle your finances and retirement. And, probably, they make statewide education policy from the Colorado State Board of Education. Science has taken a holiday there since the state school board came under the control of Republicans this year.

Few Coloradans can tell you which gas makes up the bulk of the planet’s atmosphere (that would be nitrogen, not oxygen) according to a recent Pew Center poll, but even fewer state residents can tell you what the state school board does, or that it even exists. The seven-member committee, which we elect by congressional district, is one of those oddities of Colorado government that is little known but can create big problems. It’s suddenly becoming a big problem.

Showing infinite wisdom when Colorado was created, state founders delegated almost complete control of public education to local school boards. When you’ve got school boards like the ones running Cherry Creek, Aurora and Denver school districts, it works out great. We know what works best for our own. But when you have tin-hat rebellions like the one in Jefferson County, the need for oversight becomes keen. JeffCo has been hijacked by a renegade school board that prefers flag-waving revisionist history to the real thing. They’re looking for faculties who pack their own lunches and guns every day. Fortunately, the state created a sort-of oversight board in 1951. Still, our Colorado school board is toothless compared to similar entities in places like Kansas and Texas. There, school board members confuse The Flintstones and Ben Hur with, well, what the rest of us consider reality.

Though it’s mostly regulatory in nature, the Colorado Board of Education can wreak havoc in the wrong hands, which it is poised to do right now.

Last week, the state school board nearly ended Colorado’s biennial risky behavior survey of teen students. For more than 20 years, the departments of health and education have coordinated in asking students to anonymously tell them things like whether they’ve been drinking, smoking, or bringing guns to school. They ask if they eat any fruit, drink a lot of pop or have unprotected sex.

Having been a teenager myself, having raised one, and understanding that Ben Hur was not a documentary, I can see the wisdom of such a survey. Having a pretty good grasp of modern science and what Francis Bacon was getting at, I understand how important an anonymous collection of valid data can be. The majority, Republican, members of this school board clearly do not. They prefer their Bacon crispy.

“You don’t need the survey to be able to tell kids to practice safe behavior and avoid unhealthy behavior,” said Pam Mazanec, a Republican from Larkspur, according to an Associated Press story.

Mazanec, and many like her, don’t understand the value science places on data. It is science. It’s critical to  being able to see, rather than guess, where risky teen behaviors are headed. It’s important to know, rather than hide from, data about teens who drink and have unprotected sex younger than 13, or who regularly carry guns to school. It’s not rocket science to speculate that teens might do risky, stupid things. But it’s social science to correlate behavior with things like geography and demographics. And that kind of science can tool ways to reduce risky behaviors that really work. And it has.

Republicans on the state school board want to scuttle the survey, even though everyone who testified about the issue last week was unanimous in telling them not to. They want to make it so that, instead of allowing parents to opt out of the survey, students would have to bring in permission slips to opt in. It would destroy the program.

Some school board members, such as Mazanec, made it clear they don’t like the idea of asking kids if they do drugs and have sexual intercourse. People like that who bury their heads in the sand often think “good” boys and girls wouldn’t do such things, and that making them aware of such unsavory things only invites trouble. Blink. Blink. Blink.

I doubt that the infamous Ted Haggard of New Life Church and his scandalous foibles for using meth and paying for sex with a masseuse turned a lot of Colorado Springs area teens into raging bi-sexual sex and drug addicts. Scientists, and most well-adjusted teens and adults, can tell you that being aware of unsavory behaviors doesn’t make you want to do them. Which leads one to postulate that much of the state school board is averse to science and well-adjustment.

And so the rest of the state may suffer for their malady.

Here’s the fix: We start a statewide initiative that requires anyone seeking office to pass the state’s GED exam. To be eligible for public office, a candidate must get at least 600 total points, and at least 175 points on science and social studies tests. A score of 150 points is needed to pass the math test. In addition, anyone holding political office in Colorado must pass the test each year to stay in office.

Chances are very good two things will happen: We’re going to see a lot of new faces in Colorado government, and we’re not going to have problems like the one dragging down the state school board anymore.