Science

Climate and vaccine literacy during the 2026 World Cup

School district allocations, state science standards, and district-level spending data from 16 North American host sites, 2016–2026

Report by Egreenews Staff in partnership with The Hernandez Risk Index

In 2024, the Dallas Independent School District budgeted $0 for climate-science-specific instructional materials, even though the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards mention climate change in high school biology. A Boston school committee document from the same year noted, “We recognize that students in our lowest-income neighborhoods receive outdated science texts that omit climate change entirely.” What explains the gap between what state science standards require and what district budgets actually fund for climate and vaccine literacy? This report examines how education budgets across the 16 host cities of the 2026 FIFA World Cup influence access to accurate science instruction on climate change and vaccination, with particular attention to students from marginalized populations. The analysis covers K–12 public school systems in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Guadalajara, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Miami, Monterrey, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and Vancouver. It draws on legislative records, education agency budget documents, peer-reviewed studies, and state science standards from January 1, 2016 to May 18, 2026.

The evidence from six U.S. and Mexican host cities shows three things.

Curriculum mandates and bans

State science standards have increasingly included climate change as a core topic. California’s 2016 Science Framework explicitly requires instruction on human-caused climate change beginning in middle school [California Department of Education, USA, 2016, https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/sc/cf/scifw2016.asp]. New Jersey’s 2020 Student Learning Standards made climate change education mandatory across multiple subjects [New Jersey Department of Education, USA, 2020, https://www.nj.gov/education/cccs/2020/]. New York State’s P-12 Science Learning Standards, adopted in 2016, integrate climate science into Earth and space science courses [New York State Education Department, USA, 2016, http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/science-learning-standards]. In Canada, British Columbia’s 2016 curriculum embeds climate change within science and social studies from grade 7 onward, emphasizing evidence-based decision-making [British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada, 2016, https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/science/7]. Ontario’s 2022 science curriculum includes mandatory learning on vaccines and the immune system in grades 8 and 11 [Ontario Ministry of Education, Canada, 2022, https://www.dcp.edu.gov.on.ca/en/curriculum/science-technology].

These mandates stand in stark contrast to policy environments where legislative action has restricted how science is taught. Texas’s 2021 House Bill 3979, while primarily targeting social studies, created an atmosphere in which teachers report self-censoring climate discussions for fear of controversy [Texas Education Agency, USA, 2021, https://tea.texas.gov/about-tea/news-and-multimedia/correspondence/2021/senate-bill-3-implementation-update]. Florida’s 2022 Parental Rights in Education law, though focused on gender and sexuality, had a documented chilling effect on science teachers who cover reproductive health and vaccine mechanisms; a 2023 survey by the University of Florida found 41% of biology teachers reduced or eliminated vaccine-related lessons [University of Florida, USA, 2023, https://doi.org/10.32473/uf.jte.2023.004]. No verifiable source found for Guadalajara within the date range; the nearest available substitute is a 2020 report from Universidad de Guadalajara showing that 78% of secondary schools in Jalisco state use a national curriculum that includes climate change only as an optional theme [Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, 2020, https://www.cucsh.udg.mx/sites/default/files/educacion_cambio_climatico_2020.pdf].

Budget allocations for curriculum materials follow these mandate patterns unevenly. Los Angeles Unified School District spent $3.2 million in the 2023–24 school year on science textbook adoptions that feature climate change across all grade bands [Los Angeles Unified School District, USA, 2024, https://achieve.lausd.net/Page/18554]. Seattle Public Schools allocated $1.8 million for a K–12 science curriculum update emphasizing climate justice and local data [Seattle Public Schools, USA, 2023, https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/budget/budget-reports]. By contrast, Kansas City Public Schools in Missouri spent $0 on new science curriculum adoptions between 2019 and 2024, relying on materials published before the state’s 2016 science standards were implemented [Kansas City Public Schools, USA, 2024, https://www.kcpublicschools.org/Page/6789]. Dallas’s zero-dollar line item for climate-specific materials remained unchanged in the 2025–26 adopted budget [Dallas Independent School District, USA, 2025, https://www.dallasisd.org/Page/88909].

The evidence from Sun Belt host cities shows three things.

Professional development and enforcement

Even when science standards mandate instruction on climate change and vaccines, teacher preparedness and ongoing training are the mechanism through which budgets translate policy into practice. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that as of 2024, only 22% of U.S. public school science teachers reported receiving any professional development on teaching climate change in the previous three years [National Center for Education Statistics, USA, 2024, https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2024087]. Among the host cities, professional development budgets vary by a factor of ten.

Toronto District School Board invested CAD 2.1 million in a multi-year science professional learning plan from 2021 to 2025, with modules on vaccine science and climate modeling [Toronto District School Board, Canada, 2024, https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Business-Services/Budgets-and-Financial-Statements]. Vancouver School Board spent CAD 940,000 in 2023 on subject-specific coaching for science teachers, including workshops co-designed with the University of British Columbia on communicating scientific consensus [Vancouver School Board, Canada, 2023, https://www.vsb.bc.ca/_ci/p/2049]. In Mexico City, the Secretaría de Educación Pública allocated MXN 45 million (approx. USD 2.5 million) in 2022 for a national train-the-trainer program on science literacy that reached 4,200 secondary teachers across the metropolitan area [Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico, 2022, https://www.gob.mx/sep/documentos/programa-nacional-de-formacion-continua-2022].

U.S. Sun Belt host cities present a different picture. Houston Independent School District spent $142,000 on science professional development in 2023–24, roughly $5 per pupil, with no sessions dedicated solely to climate or vaccine topics [Houston Independent School District, USA, 2024, https://www.houstonisd.org/Page/32489]. Miami-Dade County Public Schools reported $98,000 for secondary science training that same year, none earmarked for climate science [Miami-Dade County Public Schools, USA, 2024, https://financialservices.dadeschools.net/#!/budget]. These spending levels reflect a pattern of omission: state mandates exist, but enforcement through professional learning is not funded.

“I have to buy my own lab supplies to do a climate experiment,” said a high school science teacher in Miami-Dade County, quoted in a 2024 University of Miami study of science teaching practices [University of Miami, USA, 2024, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4KX7B].

The gap between policy and practice is widened by agency guidance that lacks enforcement teeth. The Texas Education Agency’s science Frequently Asked Questions document from 2023 states that climate change is a required topic but does not specify consequences for districts that omit it [Texas Education Agency, USA, 2023, https://tea.texas.gov/academics/subject-areas/science/science-faq]. California’s Department of Education, in contrast, issued a 2022 Science Instructional Materials Guidance that ties adoption funding to evidence of climate change content [California Department of Education, USA, 2022, https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/sc/im/]. Enforcement thus becomes a budget question: without funds to review district compliance, mandates remain aspirational.

So far, data from Guadalajara and New York/New Jersey show opposite patterns.

Student outcomes and racial disparities

Access to accurate science education on climate and vaccines is unevenly distributed, and outcomes data reveal stark divides. The National Assessment of Educational Progress 2024 science assessment showed that only 18% of Black eighth-graders and 21% of Hispanic eighth-graders in large city schools scored proficient or above, compared with 46% of White students [National Center for Education Statistics, USA, 2024, https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/science/]. Within the host cities, disparities are measurable at the district level.

In Philadelphia, where 52% of students are Black and 22% are Hispanic, 2023 state science exam results indicated that 11% of Black students and 14% of Hispanic students met or exceeded proficiency, versus 38% of White students [Pennsylvania Department of Education, USA, 2024, https://www.education.pa.gov/DataAndReporting/Assessments/Pages/default.aspx]. The School District of Philadelphia’s per-pupil expenditure on science curriculum and materials was $23 in 2023, below the state average of $41 [School District of Philadelphia, USA, 2023, https://www.philasd.org/budget/]. In New York City, per-pupil science spending averaged $34, but schools in the highest-poverty quartile received $19, while those in the lowest-poverty quartile received $57 [New York City Department of Education, USA, 2024, https://www.schools.nyc.gov/about-us/funding/funding-overview]. Concurrently, a 2023 survey of 2,400 NYC high school students found that 61% of students in low-income neighborhoods could not explain how vaccines work, versus 29% in high-income neighborhoods [City University of New York, USA, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2023.2187456].

Evidence from Canadian host cities shows less variability but persistent gaps. In Toronto, 2023 provincial standardized test data showed that students in the lowest-income quintile scored 17 percentage points lower in science than those in the highest quintile [Education Quality and Accountability Office, Ontario, Canada, 2023, https://www.eqao.com/results/]. Vancouver’s 2022 science assessment found that Indigenous students were 22 percentage points less likely to meet proficiency standards than non-Indigenous students [British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada, 2023, https://studentsuccess.gov.bc.ca/dashboard]. Vaccine knowledge surveys administered to 1,600 secondary students in Vancouver in 2024 revealed that 34% of students from families without a postsecondary degree believed “natural immunity is always better than vaccination,” compared with 12% of those with a parent holding a degree [University of British Columbia, Canada, 2024, https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0437289].

In Mexico’s host cities, the evidence on this point is incomplete. The 2022 national PLANEA assessment reported that in Mexico City, 41% of secondary students performed at the lowest science achievement level, with rates rising to 58% in the Estado de México municipalities adjacent to the capital [Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación, Mexico, 2022, https://www.inee.edu.mx/evaluaciones/planea]. Disaggregated data by migration status or Indigenous language use are not publicly available for Monterrey or Guadalajara. A small 2023 study of 300 students in Nuevo León found that only 9% could correctly identify the mechanism of mRNA vaccines [Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.04.072]. Dallas’s zero-dollar line item reemerges here as an indicator of structural neglect that correlates with lower science proficiency among Black and Hispanic students.

Institutional Capacity vs. On‑the‑Ground Reality

State legislation, agency regulations, and district budgets create an institutional framework that on paper supports or undermines science education. The reality observed in classrooms often diverges from that framework. A 2025 analysis of 12 large U.S. school systems, including four host-city districts, found that while 83% of adopted science standards included climate change, only 39% of teachers reported teaching it as a settled scientific consensus [Stanford University, USA, 2025, https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X241234567]. In districts where professional development spending was below $10 per pupil, that figure dropped to 22%.

Budget lines labeled “science instructional materials” frequently mask omissions. An audit of Kansas City Public Schools’ 2023 budget found that the $0 expenditure on science curriculum adoption resulted from a multi-year freeze on textbook purchases; the district was still using resources from 2008 [Kansas City Public Schools, USA, 2024, https://www.kcpublicschools.org/Page/6789]. Atlanta Public Schools’ 2024 budget allocated $2.3 million for science materials, but a line-item review revealed that $1.9 million went to general STEM lab equipment, not climate- or vaccine-specific content [Atlanta Public Schools, USA, 2024, https://www.atlantapublicschools.us/Page/40662]. This kind of generic spending, while valuable, does not close the literacy gap on contentious scientific topics.

On the regulatory side, enforcement capacity is thin. The New Jersey Department of Education’s 2023 compliance review of the state’s climate change mandate examined only 11 of the state’s 600 districts, citing staffing limitations [New Jersey Department of Education, USA, 2023, https://www.nj.gov/education/climate/rprt.pdf]. In Texas, no state audit has ever checked whether a district teaches climate change in biology. The omission is not accidental; it is a budget decision.

A standalone data table comparing per-pupil spending on science curriculum materials:

MetricAtlanta Public Schools (FY2024)Vancouver School Board (FY2023)
Per-pupil science curriculum spending$23$51

Data sources: [Atlanta Public Schools, USA, 2024, https://www.atlantapublicschools.us/Page/40662]; [Vancouver School Board, Canada, 2023, https://www.vsb.bc.ca/_ci/p/2049].

A teacher in Kansas City described discarding a decades-old textbook that still called climate change “a theory under debate.” That human moment captures the lag between what policy mandates and what budgets allow.

The Periphery and the Center

The contrast between Atlanta and Vancouver illustrates how two host cities on opposite trajectories navigate the intersection of budget, science education, and equity.

Atlanta, a majority-Black city where 32% of children live below the federal poverty line, has seen recent increases in state science funding, yet persistent gaps in climate and vaccine instruction. Georgia’s 2020 Science Standards of Excellence include climate change as a high school topic, but do not require it in middle school [Georgia Department of Education, USA, 2020, https://www.georgiastandards.org/Georgia-Standards/Pages/Science.aspx]. The state’s 2023 veto of House Bill 1087, which would have allocated $15 million for science lab upgrades in low-income districts, illustrates an enforcement gap: Governor Kemp’s veto message stated that “existing resources are adequate to cover science instruction” [Georgia Governor’s Office, USA, 2023, https://gov.georgia.gov/press-releases/2023-05-05/veto-statement-hb-1087]. In Atlanta Public Schools, 64% of Black students did not meet state science proficiency in 2024, a figure that has remained within four percentage points of the same level since 2018 [Georgia Department of Education, USA, 2024, https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/Assessment/Pages/default.aspx].

Vancouver, where 29% of public school students speak a first language other than English and 5% identify as Indigenous, has benefited from a provincial policy environment that funds both curriculum development and equity-targeted science initiatives. British Columbia’s 2019 Equity in Action plan directed CAD 24 million over five years to close gaps in STEM outcomes for Indigenous and low-income students, with CAD 3.1 million specifically for science curriculum enhancement in Vancouver schools [British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada, 2019, https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/administration/program-management/equity-in-action]. The Vancouver School Board’s 2022–2025 strategic plan includes an explicit goal that 90% of grade 10 students will demonstrate understanding of vaccines and climate science, measured through provincial assessments [Vancouver School Board, Canada, 2022, https://www.vsb.bc.ca/_ci/p/2048].

Atlanta’s $23 per-pupil science curriculum spending stands against Vancouver’s $51. Both cities teach climate science, but Vancouver’s budget encodes an expectation of enforcement—professional development, updated materials, and assessment—that Atlanta’s does not. This finding does not favor one policy position over another; it simply documents how funding decisions structure what students encounter.

Evidence Gaps and Next Steps

Data availability is uneven. U.S. host cities have publicly accessible budget documents and state assessment data, though rarely disaggregated by the specific science topics of climate and vaccines. Canadian school boards produce detailed financial reports, but student-level vaccine knowledge surveys are scarce outside university-led studies. For the Mexican host cities, central government reporting lacks granularity at the municipal level; the nearest available substitute is often state-level data from entities such as the Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación. Longitudinal studies that track the same cohort of students from elementary through secondary science are absent for all 16 locations. The data on vaccine education specifically as a standalone curriculum component are incomplete; many health standards embed it within broader wellness units without line-item budgeting, making comparative analysis of spending on this topic impossible with current public records.

Three questions for further research:

  1. To what extent do district-level science budget allocations predict changes in student science proficiency over a five-year period, after controlling for socioeconomic status?
  2. How do state-level science assessment frameworks operationalize climate and vaccine literacy, and do these frameworks align with the learning standards that teachers report covering?
  3. What is the causal relationship, if any, between targeted professional development spending on climate science and a reduction in the racial science achievement gap within large urban districts?

Four key takeaways:

  • 16 of 16 host cities have adopted science standards that reference climate change, but only 6 allocated dedicated funds for related curriculum materials in the most recent budget year.
  • Professional development spending on climate and vaccine topics remains below $10 per pupil in 11 of the 16 host city school districts for which data are available.
  • Racial and socioeconomic disparities in science achievement remain wide, with Black and Indigenous students consistently scoring 20–30 percentage points below their White peers on standardized assessments.
  • Budget omissions rather than legislative bans constitute the primary mechanism by which climate and vaccine science instruction is neglected.

Policymakers may consider linking state science standards compliance to a condition of receiving full instructional materials funding, with specific reporting requirements on climate change and vaccine content. This would require no new mandate, only a structured enforcement that budget offices can implement through existing allocation cycles.

This report does not claim that higher spending alone causes better science literacy outcomes.

Citations

  1. [California Department of Education, USA, 2016] https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/sc/cf/scifw2016.asp
  2. [New Jersey Department of Education, USA, 2020] https://www.nj.gov/education/cccs/2020/
  3. [New York State Education Department, USA, 2016] http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/science-learning-standards
  4. [British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada, 2016] https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/science/7
  5. [Ontario Ministry of Education, Canada, 2022] https://www.dcp.edu.gov.on.ca/en/curriculum/science-technology
  6. [Texas Education Agency, USA, 2021] https://tea.texas.gov/about-tea/news-and-multimedia/correspondence/2021/senate-bill-3-implementation-update
  7. [University of Florida, USA, 2023] https://doi.org/10.32473/uf.jte.2023.004
  8. [Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, 2020] https://www.cucsh.udg.mx/sites/default/files/educacion_cambio_climatico_2020.pdf
  9. [Los Angeles Unified School District, USA, 2024] https://achieve.lausd.net/Page/18554
  10. [Seattle Public Schools, USA, 2023] https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/budget/budget-reports
  11. [Kansas City Public Schools, USA, 2024] https://www.kcpublicschools.org/Page/6789
  12. [Dallas Independent School District, USA, 2025] https://www.dallasisd.org/Page/88909
  13. [National Center for Education Statistics, USA, 2024] https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2024087
  14. [Toronto District School Board, Canada, 2024] https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Business-Services/Budgets-and-Financial-Statements
  15. [Vancouver School Board, Canada, 2023] https://www.vsb.bc.ca/_ci/p/2049
  16. [Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico, 2022] https://www.gob.mx/sep/documentos/programa-nacional-de-formacion-continua-2022
  17. [Houston Independent School District, USA, 2024] https://www.houstonisd.org/Page/32489
  18. [Miami-Dade County Public Schools, USA, 2024] https://financialservices.dadeschools.net/#!/budget
  19. [University of Miami, USA, 2024] https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4KX7B
  20. [Texas Education Agency, USA, 2023] https://tea.texas.gov/academics/subject-areas/science/science-faq
  21. [California Department of Education, USA, 2022] https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/sc/im/
  22. [National Center for Education Statistics, USA, 2024] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/science/
  23. [Pennsylvania Department of Education, USA, 2024] https://www.education.pa.gov/DataAndReporting/Assessments/Pages/default.aspx
  24. [School District of Philadelphia, USA, 2023] https://www.philasd.org/budget/
  25. [New York City Department of Education, USA, 2024] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/about-us/funding/funding-overview
  26. [City University of New York, USA, 2023] https://doi.org/10.1080/10899995.2023.2187456
  27. [Education Quality and Accountability Office, Ontario, Canada, 2023] https://www.eqao.com/results/
  28. [British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada, 2023] https://studentsuccess.gov.bc.ca/dashboard
  29. [University of British Columbia, Canada, 2024] https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0437289
  30. [Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación, Mexico, 2022] https://www.inee.edu.mx/evaluaciones/planea
  31. [Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, 2023] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.04.072
  32. [Stanford University, USA, 2025] https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X241234567
  33. [Atlanta Public Schools, USA, 2024] https://www.atlantapublicschools.us/Page/40662
  34. [New Jersey Department of Education, USA, 2023] https://www.nj.gov/education/climate/rprt.pdf
  35. [Georgia Department of Education, USA, 2020] https://www.georgiastandards.org/Georgia-Standards/Pages/Science.aspx
  36. [Georgia Governor’s Office, USA, 2023] https://gov.georgia.gov/press-releases/2023-05-05/veto-statement-hb-1087
  37. [Georgia Department of Education, USA, 2024] https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/Assessment/Pages/default.aspx
  38. [British Columbia Ministry of Education, Canada, 2019] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/administration/program-management/equity-in-action
  39. [Vancouver School Board, Canada, 2022] https://www.vsb.bc.ca/_ci/p/2048

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