Group Promotes Science Standards

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 Group Promotes Science Standards

By: Scott Rothschild
Lawrence Journal World
July 8, 2006
Original Article

Topeka — The high-powered Discovery Institute, which promotes the theory of intelligent design, said Friday it will launch a campaign to persuade Kansans that controversial science standards approved by the State Board of Education are sound.

The campaign will coincide with state school board electioneering in which the science standards are expected to figure prominently as challengers seek to unseat board incumbents who voted to put the standards in place.

“Kansas citizens need to have accurate information about what the science standards do,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute.

West said the group will start an information campaign and Internet petition drive. He declined to say how much the center would spend.

The decision puts the Discovery Institute in the center of hotly contested State Board of Education school board races.

The board’s 6-4 decision to approve science standards that question evolution has been a major issue in the five board places up for election this year. The science standards are used as guidelines to what students learn in Kansas public schools.

Mainstream scientists have said the standards criticize evolution in a way that could introduce intelligent design in science classrooms. Intelligent design posits there was a master force that designed life. Most scientists consider it a form of creationism, or religious belief rather than science.

“Everybody sees through the intent of the Discovery Institute,” said Kansas University research professor Steve Case.

Case was the chairman of a committee of scientists and educators that put together science standards that were ultimately rejected by the State Board of Education in favor of the standards that raised questions about evolution.

Case said every major science organization in the country has denounced the standards supported by the 6-4 majority on the state education board and the Discovery Institute.

But West said the mainstream scientists are simply trying to squelch views that question the status quo in teaching evolution.

West said the nonprofit group will not endorse nor campaign for particular candidates, but will provide information to persuade Kansans the standards approved by the board are the best ones.

Citing polls, West said, “The vast majority of Americans support what has been done.”

Of those running for re-election to the board, Connie Morris, R-St. Francis, John Bacon, R-Olathe, and Ken Willard, R-Hutchinson, voted for the science standards. Janet Waugh, D-Kansas City, who is running for re-election, voted against the standards.

Case also said he resented the fact that an out-of-state organization was trying to influence Kansas elections.

“Kansans are not appreciative of folks coming in from the outside, trying to explain it to us,” he said.

But West said the group was simply exercising its rights of free speech and felt compelled to combat what it considered inaccurate information given by the other side.

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 Group Weighs in for Kansas


SCIENCE STANDARDS: Seattle-based group supports the new guidelines
Critics say the effort is election-related, but backers say it is strictly public relations.

A Seattle-based group is launching a public relations campaign to defend science standards adopted in November by the Kansas Board of Education.

Those standards encourage students to look at both the theory of evolution and criticism of it, and changes the definition of science from the search for natural explanations to a search for more adequate explanations.

Critics say the standards include Intelligent Design terminology and many of its arguments against evolution.

The new campaign, dubbed “Stand Up for Science, Stand Up for Kansas,” includes a Web site with an online petition, e-mail campaign, radio advertising and free screenings of the documentary “Icons of Evolution.”

“What we’re trying to do is counter a campaign of misinformation which is widely distorting what the standards say and do,” said John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

West said the campaign is in response to criticism of the standards by Kansas Citizens for Science, including a letter that group sent to Kansas school superintendents in June and a fact sheet posted on its Web site.

He denied that the Stand up for Science campaign had anything to do with state board elections this summer and fall.

Four of the seats held by the board’s conservative six-member majority are up for election. Three of those incumbents are running for re-election; a fourth isn’t but has a son-in-law in the race.

A fifth seat up for election is held by a moderate Democrat who faces a primary challenger who supports the standards.

“We don’t get involved in election campaigns,” West said. “We’re responding to Kansas Citizens for Science, doing the same sort of public education effort.”

Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, said West’s claims were disingenuous. With most of the challengers saying they would throw out the new standards, Krebs said, “everybody knows it’s critical who wins.”

“They wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t crunch time.”

West declined to say how much his group was spending on the Stand Up for Science campaign.

The Web site was launched Friday, and West said he expected the initial e-mails to go out next week.

People from around the nation are welcome to sign the petition, West said.

“One of the claims being made by the other side is that Kansas is a pariah in the nation because they adopted the standards,” he said. “We want to demonstrate what is well-attested: the vast majority of Americans support the education effort that the Kansas Board of Education adopted.”

Krebs, however, said the online petition’s purpose is to come up with numbers that say a certain percent of the public supports the Discovery Institute’s point of view.

“That’s not the way science is done,” he said. “It’s public relations.”

Though people signing the online petition must submit a home and e-mail address, Discovery Institute spokesman Robert Crowther said the e-mail addresses will not be shared outside the institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

No decisions have been made about submitting the petitions officially in Kansas, Crowther said.

The radio campaign is expected to begin in the next two to four weeks.

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 Group Launches Campaign for Kan. School Science Standards


TOPEKA, Kan. - An anti-evolution group launched an Internet campaign Friday to build support for Kansas science standards in schools, less than a month before elections that could decide whether those standards remain.

Officials from the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, based in Seattle, said they're trying to counter criticism of the standards from many scientists and national science groups.

John West, a center vice president, said in a national conference call with reporters that such criticism has resulted in a "wildly distorting" picture of the standards.

The standards, adopted last year by the State Board of Education's conservative majority, don't mention intelligent design or other alternatives to evolution. But they treat evolution as a flawed theory, defying mainstream scientific views. Critics contend parts of the standards are based on long-discredited arguments about evolution.

West said the center won't endorse candidates or otherwise become involved in races for five state board seats on the ballot. Instead, he said, its "Stand Up for Science" efforts, which involve a new Web site with a petition that can be signed and possibly radio ads, are designed to educate Kansans.

But Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, which opposes the anti-evolution standards, said the timing of the campaign is no coincidence.

Of the five seats on the Aug. 1 primary ballot this year, four are held by conservative Republicans who supported the new standards. If two conservatives are defeated, it would shift the board's majority to the moderates.

"The intelligent design movement as a whole knows that if they can retain the majority, they'll have a victory," Krebs said. "If they lose it, it will be another crushing defeat for intelligent design."

The standards took effect in November and will be used to develop tests students take to measure how well schools are teaching, but decisions about what actually will be taught remain with 299 local school boards. Some educators fear pressure will increase to teach less about evolution or more about creationism or intelligent design, which says some features of the universe are so well-ordered and complex that they are best explained by an intelligent cause.

West and other backers contend the new standards will encourage a freer discussion in the classroom.

"Obviously, we favor intelligent design, but our science policy is that we favor good science education," West told reporters.

Critics see intelligent design as repackaged creationism. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that creationism can't be taught in public schools because it endorses a particular religious view.

West said the Kansas standards encourage schools to expose students to both the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory. He refused to say how much the center plans to spend on its campaign but that it's necessary because of a "year of misinformation."

Krebs said trying to expose students to supposed problems with evolution is part of a strategy designed to lead them to embrace intelligent design.

The new standards say evolutionary theory that all life had a common origin has been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology. They also describe as controversial the theory that changes over time in one species can lead to a new species.

None of those statements were in Kansas' previous standards, which treated evolution as well-established and universally accepted by scientists.

Krebs said the previous standards didn't keep teachers from touching upon criticism of evolution in their classrooms. But adding such statements to the standards gives them more credibility than they've earned in science, he said.

"They're looking for a government handout rather than doing the work in the marketplace of ideas," Krebs said of intelligent design advocates who backed the new standards.