DCEEC and Environmental Literacy Plan

An environmentally literate person:

• can discuss and describe ecological and environmental systems and human impacts on these systems;
• engages in hands-on, outdoor learning experiences that involve discovery, inquiry, and problem solving;
• is able to question and analyze information pertaining to his or her surrounding environment; and
• has the capacity to take actions that respect, restore, protect, and sustain the health and well-being of human communities and environmental systems.

What is an Environmental Literacy Plan?
An environmental literacy plan creates the framework for standards, achievement, professional development, assessment, and leadership for individuals and organizations to thrive and achieve innovation in education. Plans should include:

1. A description of how the state agencies will measure the environmental literacy of students.
2. Content standards and how they relate to environmental literacy.
3. A description of programs for professional development of teachers.
4. Must address the relationship of the plan to graduation requirements.
5. A description of how the plan will be implemented.
6. The plan must specify who will be involved in review, and it should include stakeholders such as State Education agencies, non-profits, federal agencies, etc.

For more information about developing a state environmental literacy plan, please visit http://www.naaee.org/selp.pdf/view.

Why do we need an Environmental Literacy Plan for DC?
On a national level, the No Child Left Inside Act of 2011, introduced July 14, 2011, amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to require states, as a prerequisite to receiving implementation grants, to develop environmental literacy plans, approved by the Secretary of Education, for pre-kindergarten through grade 12 that include environmental education standards and teacher training.

The Chesapeake Bay Executive Order 13508 (May 12, 2009) contains a Citizen Stewardship section, which includes the objective to foster a dramatic increase in the number of citizen stewards who support and carry out local conservation and restoration efforts. One of the action items of this objective is to initiate robust elementary and secondary environmental literacy plans. For this action, there are three sub-actions: 1) Support and enhance outdoor student environmental education programs; 2) Provide high-quality professional development, tools and resources for educators, and 3) Encourage the creation and maintenance of green schools, including schoolyard habitat and green facilities programs

On a local level, in June 2010, the DC City Council unanimously passed the DC Healthy Schools Act, which includes a provision for developing an environmental literacy plan for DC. The 2011 Amendments further clarify what needs to be included in the plan.

Click here to see what other states are doing.  We want DC to be prepared to apply for environmental education funding when it becomes available.

Current efforts!
As mandated by the Healthy Schools Act, the District Department of the Environment (DDOE) has formally formed the DC Environmental Literacy Plan Workgroup that meets regularly to develop the draft plan that will be submitted to DC Council in June 2012. Agencies required to collaborate with DDOE include: DC Public Schools, DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education, DC Public Charter School Board, DC State Board of Education, DC Department of Parks and Recreation, and the University of the District of Columbia. The DC ELP Workgroup has 2 representatives from each agency named in the healthy Schools Act and is responsible for developing sections of the ELP and overseeing the following task forces:

• Content Standards and Professional Development
• Graduation Requirements and Evaluation
• Implementation and Funding

How you can help!
We invite you to be a stakeholder in this process and to help us develop the road map to environmentally literate future DC generations. The DC ELP Workgroup meetings are usually on the 4th Tuesday at 2pm at the District Department of the Environment. Task forces also meet regularly, but dates and times are not set.

As part of the plan, we will be including a resource list of organizations that are currently available to District schools, students, and teachers that support environmental literacy. If you work for an organization that is involved in environmental education, please contact Grace Manubay (information below). She will send you the link to a survey that will allow you to provide information about your organization that could possibly be included in the resource list.

To subscribe to the DC ELP listserv and get periodic updates, please search Yahoo! groups for DC_ELP and join that group.