Not exactly. A free version of the article your source uses may be found
here. It is not a study, but neither is it just some op-ed piece either. The authors wrote an entire monograph on this subject. The "study" is really some of the highlights from their book in a simplified and vastly shorter form. In other words, just because it isn't a study doesn't mean that there isn't a great deal of research behind it.
This is not a very fair simplification (mostly because of your link's already simplified version of an article which is a simplification of a monograph). It is not that 28% "teach evolution" (emphasis added):
"
More promising data suggest that America's high schools contain thousands of outstanding, effective educators of evolutionary biology.
We estimate that 28% of all biology teachers
consistently implement the major recommendations and conclusions of the National Research Council:
They unabashedly introduce evidence that evolution has occurred and craft lesson plans so that evolution is a theme that unifies disparate topics in biology"
Here's what the actual authors state:
"Our data show that these teachers understandably want to avoid controversy. Often they have not taken a course in evolution and they lack confidence in their ability to defend it (see the figure, see SOM for details). Their strategies for avoiding controversy are varied, but three were especially common and each has the effect of undermining science. Some teach evolutionary biology as though it only applies to molecular biology—completely ignoring macro-evolution of species. At best, this approach sacrifices a rich understanding of the diversity of species. At worst it lends credence to the creationist claim that there is no evidence for one species giving rise to others." (there's more, but as I linked to the whole article and it's only a few pages, there's no point in quoting everything).
This doesn't make them deplorable. Moreover, while the authors' have wide support about the problem, they don't have such support about their solution:
"For Berkman and Plutzer, a new generation of biology teachers, trained in and supportive of rigorous standards, shall enact science standards enmeshed with evolutionary theory. But as I will demonstrate, educating biology teachers to actually teach evolution is not easily solved by a reliance on standards
per se. Turning toward the site of teacher training—colleges of education—as solvent to anti-evolutionary attitudes, is no less fraught with political maneuvering. Nor is it less likely to be filled with Creationists than the general read of the public that Berkman and Plutzer craft."
Long, D. E. (2012). The politics of teaching evolution, science education standards, and being a creationist.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching,
49(1), 122-139.
Also from the above:
"If our intention is fostering an educational climate where American students are brought into an understanding of science, then we are not well served by letting absolutist claims such as Pond and Pond (2010) pass by so easily:
"Reality…is not subject to human decree. It is what it is and will remain so despite any desire that it conform to a particular political, ideological, or theological dogma. Consequently, we cannot dismiss scientific explanations of natural phenomena because we dislike or disapprove of the universe described. Yet, this is exactly what some people attempt (p. 641)."
The statement above is problematic on a number of counts."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/science/study-most-high-school-biology.html
Here I think you, your link, and the authors of the article bring up a vital issue. The sciences credo is supposed to be exactly what is described above. It's basic critical thinking. However, it's hard enough to teach logic and analytic approaches, let alone tell them the importance of testing, of questioning, of all the things that brought us from Darwin to today, and then tell them to ignore all of that an accept the authority of scientific theories. It's a distinction many adults do not make (how many times have people cited scientific research on this forum only to be met with rejoinders about "appeals to authority"?).
Creationism isn't the only problem by far when it comes to things like this:
It is a wonder, in that their are widely differing views both with respect to the problem (your link to Programme for International Student Assessment didn't work, but I went to their website and found
this which offers some perspective on Education in the US and why the fact that the US is "one of most highly educated labor forces in the OECD area" is not as nice as it sounds, as well as
this study on teachers).
The U.S. has most of the top universities in the world for any field. It produces more scientific research than any country in the world (which is why so many researchers in other countries have to publish their research in English). It produces more research tools (from mathematical modeling and statistical tools to advanced imaging equipment).
Yet most people do not know what this entails because their main exposure to science was in high school, where they were taught a model of how science works that applied over a century ago but is radically different than how research and the sciences work today. The "hypothesis-experiment-theory" model of Science is simply not reflected in actual scientific research. Students in high schools and colleges are (even many with undergraduate degrees in science) are not exposed to the ways in which scientific literature is produced and evaluated or even what it is.
For most people, scientific research exists as reported in media outlets.
As for pre-college education, the main failure has to do with the fact that we have an educational model built on the presumption that pre-college education was to prepare for college education and college education was necessary for everybody. So we teach mathematics as a means to an end (i.e., we teach students rote mechanisms to solve particular problems they will encounter in future math courses, many of which they never take and many of which are also largely useless). High school students learn how to multiply matrices and solve systems of linear equations when
1) if they intend to pursue a science in which this is important, they will learn it again in a linear algebra course or in a some multivariate mathematics course, making it a waste of time
and
2) it is utterly useless. I've seen many pre-calculus textbooks tutoring high school students, and they attempt to cover in one chapter what an entire semester long course does in college. How? By removing anything useful other than rote procedures for doing things with vectors and matrices which don't make any sense because there is no time to explain how vital these are.
They don't learn logic. They don't usually learn statistics or probability. They learn how to do things so that they can pass a calculus course.
As for science, too many teachers have too little experience with science relative to what they know about how to teach. This isn't a simple problem. It's vital that teachers at that level know much more about
how to get students to learn than it is that they know the nuances of scientific practices. If you don't believe me, take some polls of people who took science courses in college and found that some professors were awful and couldn't teach. My aunt's father was a professor of mathematics who hated teaching and especially hated teaching more basic course. So when he was required to, he made students solve problems they couldn't and introduced them to mathematical concepts they weren't ready for.
How many people are able to distinguish between scientific literature, textbooks or course material, and the kind of science books you might find in a Barnes & Noble? Are we supposed to teach high school children about peer-review processes and when and how such processes fail?
Science is fundamentally (as an ideal) a matter of research, testing and re-testing, and trying to prove yourself wrong. In practice, it usually isn't, but that's the attitude that we want students to have of science.
How do we tell high school children that knowledge, that science, the academia is all about questioning your own assumptions, proving yourself wrong, etc., and then turn around and tell them "don't question this it's a fact"?
How many pre-calculus mathematics problems do you think you can solve? How about balancing chemical equations? What about solving physics problems?
