Advocates of 'intelligent design' win in Kansas, lose in Dover, Pa.

In a move lauded by intelligent design advocates and derided by scientists, the board approved standards Nov. 8 that cast doubt on evolution and redefine the word “science” so it would not be limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena but also allow for supernatural explanations.

While the Kansas state board action appears to bolster the intelligent design movement, the results of a school board election in Dover, Pa., Nov. 8 dealt it a blow.

Voters ousted eight Dover school board members who backed a controversial policy calling for teachers to introduce the concept of intelligent design in ninth-grade biology classes. The Dover Area school district is embroiled in a court case involving the constitutionality of that policy.

The concept of intelligent design is based on the idea that nature alone cannot explain life’s complexity.

In Kansas, the new standards call for high school students to understand the major concepts of evolution. But they also claim that Darwin’s theory that all life had a common origin and that natural biochemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged by fossil evidence and molecular biology.

Prominent scientists and science organizations say there is no controversy over evolution and that there is clear evidence from a wide range of fields -- from paleontology to molecular biology -- that all life on Earth originated from a single simple life-form.

While the Kansas science standards don’t explicitly promote intelligent design, advocates of that concept helped write them. The new standards take effect in 2008.

The standards do not mandate what is taught in Kansas public schools but they do determine what will be covered in state assessments. As a result, Kansas school boards are likely to face pressure to include intelligent design in their science curricula.

The Kansas state board has been embroiled over intelligent design for years. In 1999, the board deleted most references to evolution in the state science standards. That decision was overturned in 2002 after voters defeated several conservative members who promoted intelligent design. A new conservative majority was elected last year and revived arguments over the teaching of evolution.

National Science Teachers Association Executive Director Gerry Wheeler calls the Kansas science standards “disheartening.” He says the standards “contain significant errors regarding the scientific theory of evolution that compromise the document’s integrity, as well as that of all of science.”

Alan I. Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science, called the Kansas state board action “a vote to mix science and faith in public school science classrooms, at great risk to the economy, to the educational institutions and, most importantly, to the children of Kansas.”

“We do not believe that science and religion are inherently at odds,” Leshner says. But “scientific explanations are limited to rigorous, testable explanations of the natural world and cannot go beyond.”

“By endorsing science standards that contain misleading information and literally change the definition of science in order to cast doubt on biological evolution,” Leshner says, “the board of education has taken a vote to confuse students and to undermine science education.”

“There are a lot of good science teachers in Kansas who are not going to pay attention to these standards and will keep teaching evolution,” says Jack Krebs, vice president of a group called Kansas Citizens for Science, who also is the technology director for the Oskaloosa, Kan., school district and teaches math at Oskaloosa High School.

But, he says, the new standards “give a green light to any district that wants to bring in creationism. They provide a rationale and justification for teaching creationism. They put a damper on the teaching of biology because a lot of science teachers might downplay evolution or not teach evolution at all because they don’t want to open a Pandora’s box.”

Krebs was on the committee that wrote the Kansas science standards. Even though the committee resisted any attempt to water down evolution, Krebs says its recommendations were overruled by the state board. Of the 10 state board members, he says, six are “creationists,” and “religious arguments were central to the board members who argued for these changes.”

All 10 board members are up for re-election in 2006. Noting that all pro-intelligent design members of the Dover, Pa., school board were voted out of office, Krebs says he “hopes for a similar backlash in Kansas.”

In Dover, eight of the nine school board members were up for re-election, including six who were appointed within the last year to temporarily fill vacancies created by resignations.

The incumbents were challenged by a slate known as Dover CARES (Citizens Actively Reviewing Educational Strategies), which was established to oppose the school board’s intelligent design policy.

The entire CARE slate was elected. One of the newly elected board members is Bryan Rehm, a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the district’s policy on intelligent design (Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District et al.).

The suit was filed by 11 parents, who argued that the policy violated the First Amendment’s clause on the establishment of religion and claimed that intelligent design is merely a watered-down version of biblical creationism.

Dover’s intelligent design policy calls for teachers to read a statement in ninth-grade biology classes stating that Darwin’s theory of evolution is “not a fact” and that there are “gaps” in it.

The four-paragraph statement acknowledges that the Pennsylvania standards require students to learn about evolution and take a test that covers the topic. The statement suggests that students can learn about intelligent design on their own time from Of Pandas and People and other books in the school library on the subject.

During the trial, attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that the school district purchased those books with money raised through a church.

Two of the incumbent board members who lost their seats, Chair Sheila Harkins and Alan Bonsell, testified in favor of the policy. Bonsell was the driving force behind the policy and had earlier pushed for a requirement that creationism and evolution be given equal time.