At Least Some States Get It Right

Image via Wikipedia

Unless you have been under a rock or lost in a jungle you have most likely heard about the Texas Textbook fiasco.  Well at least some state are getting right. According to Omaha World-Herald staff wrtter, Joe Dejk Nebraska and several other states are not introducing Intelligent Design into state science standards.

Although advocates of intelligent design enjoyed fleeting success the past decade in Kansas, they have not found Nebraska science classrooms so welcoming.

Three members of the Nebraska Board of Education say they're not aware of any effort by board members or the public to include intelligent design in Nebraska's new science standards.

Nebraska's 253 school districts would have to adopt the state standards, or more rigorous ones, or risk losing accreditation.
The standards take on added importance this year because education officials will use them to design for the first time a statewide science test. That test will be piloted at some schools next spring and implemented at all public schools in 2012.

Nebraska's proposed standards would continue to refer to evolution as theory. California's standards, among the nation's most detailed, do not qualify evolution as a theory. Oklahoma's standards, on the other hand, make no mention of either intelligent design or evolution, but children are taught “biological change over time.”

In Iowa, evolution also is included in state standards.
The Iowa Core, adopted by Iowa lawmakers in 2008, requires high school students to “understand and apply knowledge of biological evolution.”

Iowa high schools must adopt the Iowa Core by 2012; elementary schools by 2014.

... a 2005 federal court ruling that found a Dover, Pa., school board violated the U.S. Constitution when it approved teaching intelligent design alongside evolution.
Although Kansas' standards no longer refer to intelligent design, an introduction to the standards includes a reminder to teachers not to “ridicule, belittle or embarrass a student for expressing an alternative view or belief.”

The National Science Teachers Association opposes mandating the teaching of intelligent design. The association endorses teaching evolution, viewing it “as a major unifying concept.”

Read the entire article here: Standards keep focus on evolution

Related articles by Zemanta

• Evolution's New Foe: Timid School Administrators (wired.com)
• Texas SBoE and the Flinstones (no2religion)

Creationists Continue to Dictate Luisiana Science Education Policy

Press release from the Louisiana Coalition for Science

Baton Rouge, LA, September 28, 2009 — On September 16, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) ignored the recommendations of science education professionals in the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) and allowed the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a Religious Right lobbying group, to dictate the procedure concerning complaints about creationist supplementary materials used in public school science classes under the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). At BESE’s September 16 Student/School Performance and Support (SSPS) Committee  meeting, DOE presented recommendations for reviewing such materials (see attached DOE proposal). However, DOE’s recommendations were amended to include changes proposed by SSPS Committee chair Dale Bayard, the LFF’s point man at BESE (see attached draft). BESE committee members approved the changes without opposition after hearing testimony by creationists who attended the meeting. As a result, the prerogatives of the DOE professional science education staff have been severely undermined, as explained below. The audiotape of the meeting shows that Bayard and the LFF pulled off a royal snow job.

Read the complete text here.