Illinois 1 Of 7 States To Pass Laws Requiring Education On Climate Change, But Funding Lacking So Far
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Next school year, teachers in public schools across the state will be required by law to educate students on climate change. Stamp hopes that will lead to more comprehensive, community-based climate instruction in every classroom. Illinois’ law passed in 2024 after a joint effort led by Chicago-area high school activists and the nonprofit group Climate Education for Illinois, part of a growing national trend to better prepare students for the warming world they will inherit. New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maine and California have already required such education by law. And this past summer, Oregon also passed a bill requiring climate education.
Illinois’s mandate comes as the state experiences rising impacts from climate change. “In Illinois, especially in the recent years, we’ve been seeing a high rate of tornadoes, flash floods and smoke coming in from Canada,” said Abhinav Anne, a senior at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville who helped advocate for the new law. “Although we aren’t [on] the coastlines in California or Florida, we do see a lot more of the onset of climate change within these larger natural disasters that are happening more in the Midwest region.”
But Illinois hasn’t allocated funding to support the rollout of the climate education mandate. And the federal government, busy rolling back climate protections and censoring references to global warming, won’t be picking up the slack. Education advocates are coming together to fill in the gaps so teachers have the resources they need to work climate change into their lessons.
They don’t have to start from scratch. The state’s Learning Standards for Science already included climate change, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. Still, Helen von den Steinen, co-founder of Climate Education for Illinois, noted that climate education requirements had been largely limited to high school science courses. The new law, she said, offers a clearer mandate that climate change should be taught at all grade levels and can be incorporated in all subjects—not just science.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20102025/illinois-climate-education/