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Most students in the U.S. are learning about climate change in schools, according to a new survey. But the quality of that climate science education is, for many students, questionable.

The survey, published Thursday in Science by researchers at Penn State University and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), collected data from 1,500 science teachers across the United States. It found that three out of four science teachers — including 70 percent of middle school and 87 percent of high school teachers — spend at least an hour on climate change instruction. That, said Minda Berbeco, programs and policy director at NCSE and a co-author of the study, is good news.

“Most teachers are covering climate change. That means that most students are going to leave high school with at least interacting with climate change once, an that’s fantastic,” she told ThinkProgress.

But the challenge arises, Berbeco said, when you look at how these teachers are teaching climate science. Thirty percent of the teachers surveyed report teaching students that climate change is […]