Illinois is joining a handful of states across the country that have made climate change education a matter of law. And it’s in part thanks to a student from Naperville.
Over the past year, recent Neuqua Valley High School graduate Grace Brady helped create and write House Bill 4895, which amends the state’s school code so that it requires Illinois public schools to educate students on climate change starting in 2026.
Earlier this month, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the legislation into law.
“I’m very happy about it. It’s awesome,” Brady, 18, said in a call from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she’ll soon be starting her freshman year. She’s majoring in sustainability and environmental science.
As passed, the measure provides that beginning in the 2026-27 school year, “every public school shall provide instruction on climate change.” That instruction, it says, can include but isn’t limited to “identifying the environmental and ecological impacts of climate change on individuals and communities and evaluating solutions for addressing and mitigating the impact of climate change.”
The measure also says that the State Board of Education should, subject to appropriation, “prepare and make available multidisciplinary instructional resources and professional learning opportunities for educators that may be used to meet” requirements of the amended code.
The legislation was initiated by a desire to bolster climate change education locally that started to weigh on Brady last year, she said during an interview in July. She has always had an interest in environmental advocacy, she said, but the impulse to enact change — and take her ideas as far as Springfield — was the function of a few recent experiences that kicked her advocacy into high gear.
In part, Brady’s interest in climate change education was stoked in a course she took last year during which she was tasked with researching how the topic could be better addressed in Illinois schools. Meanwhile, in summer 2023, Brady also interned with Naperville-based environmental nonprofit Accelerate Climate Solutions.
Between the two, Brady found herself grappling with the concern that, in her experience, climate change “was just kind of something that was touched on but not really talked about in detail (in school),” she said. She wanted to do something about it.
Brady reached out to state Rep. Janet Yang Rohr, D-Naperville. Together, they went back and forth drafting a bill aimed at closing gaps with climate change education across the state. HB 4895 was the end result.
Speaking about the bill before it had been signed by Pritzker, Yang Rohr said the measure’s purpose is twofold. “It makes sure school districts very clearly understand that climate change, and how to address it, are being taught in the curriculum. So that’s one piece. And then the other piece is making sure that our teachers have the right tools to do so.”
Nationwide, most states have learning standards — largely set by state education boards — that include climate change, though their extent varies by state.
Twenty states, including Illinois, and Washington, D.C., have specifically adopted what are known as Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which call for middle schoolers to learn about climate science and high schoolers to receive lessons on how human activity affects the climate.
An additional 26 states have developed standards that are similar, according to Glenn Branch, deputy director of the Oakland, California-based National Center for Science Education. Prior to NGSS, which were released in 2013, only a few states had standards that had some material tied to climate change, he said.
“(This) really put climate change front and center,” Branch said.
Generally, state science standards “are documents that specify in some fairly general, abstract terms what the goals of science education in the state are,” he said. They’re essentially what students are expected to come to know and be able to do at various points through their education.
Standards, however, are not as specific as curriculum. Whereas standards specify goals of instruction, curriculum details what that instruction actually is. And with curriculum being developed at the school district level, there ends up being a lot of variation with how standards are implemented, Branch said.
In recent years, there’s been a move by states to support climate change education legislatively, he said. Connecticut changed its state law in 2022 to require that schools teach climate change a part of their science curriculum, per a report from the Hartford Courant. In October 2023, California Gov. Gavin Newsom likewise signed a measure into law that requires grades one through 12 to study the causes and effects of climate change no later than this current school year.
By Branch’s count, over the past five years there have been no fewer than 90 measures aimed at supporting climate change education introduced in the legislatures of 21 states across the country, he wrote in a June 2024 article for Yale Climate Connections. Unfortunately, a lot of those bills have not passed and those that have tend to be more symbolic in nature, he said.
He pointed to Illinois’ new climate change education requirement. Branch noted that “having a law on the books is not really much more different from having” adopted standards. But there is something to be said about flexing the force of law, he said.
“Well, in a way, it’s really powerful symbolism,” Branch said. “It’s not just the Department of Education and whoever supervises that has decided we need to teach climate change. It also shows that the legislature has recognized that there’s a need for climate change education.”
Yang Rohr agreed.
“I think, to me, it’s very moving to know that as a community, as a society, that we are saying this is important to us,” she said. “That all these future generations should know about this topic. It’s kind of a value system, and showing where our values lie. And our values lie in making sure that we’re leaving the Earth a better place than we have now.”
Branch added that, “It’s certainly nice to have it explicitly written out that every public school shall provide instruction on climate change.” He also said it’s important that the state keeps up with the provision concerning instructional materials and professional development for bettering climate change education.
“I really hope the legislature follows up by making those appropriations … to make these resources and training opportunities available to their teachers,” he said. “But we’ll have to see if that happens.”
The Associated Press contributed.