The Associated Press reports that the state Board of Education has approved science standards for public schools Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution. This is an effort to cast doubt on the concept of Evolution by pulling in questions and doubts about exactly how evolution has worked to develop varied species. It puts the state Board of Education on record as supporting the concept of Intelligent Design.
Individual school districts will determine what is taught in their classes, but the standards set by the State Board of Education will be used to determine what is tested throughout the State. It is my understanding that those tests are used under the federal law No Child Left Behind to rank the school districts. The rankings of the districts will affect the careers of the administrators, so they will "teach to the tests."
An interesting study to conduct would be to determine the degree to which individual districts taught Intelligent Design, then to see how the students in those districts did on nation-wide standardized science tests like the science questions on the SAT. The results of such immediate tests would be a short-term substitute the long-term participation of students from those districts in real biological science.
Individuals trained in Intelligent Design have never contributed to true experimental science because they have their conclusions in mind before beginning any studies. For the same reason, Intelligent Design will have no effect other than to prevent young minds from participating in real science. The loss of science may be the gain of fundamentalist "Christian" theology. The net balance will be a bad deal.
The students of Kansas have lost a major battle.
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