Elizabeth Culotta, "Is ID on the Way Out?" (2006)

News Focus
> EVOLUTION:<br> Is ID on the Way Out?
> <font>Elizabeth Culotta
> Last month, a teacher in a rural southern California high school began a monthlong course on the &quot;Philosophy of Design,&quot; exploring issues such as &quot;why is intelligent design [ID] gaining momentum?&quot; In response, 11 parents, with help from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, sued the El Tejon Unified School District on 10 January. Fresh from a decisive December win over proponents of ID in Dover, Pennsylvania, evolution's defenders geared up for another court battle.<p>

But they didn't get one. Facing projected legal costs of $100,000, the school board agreed to a settlement, ending the course early and promising not to teach any course that "promotes or endorses creationism, creation science, or intelligent design."

For some observers, the board's swift capitulation was further proof that the ID movement has crested. Although the specifics of the cases were different, "the very decisive win in Dover meant [the California board] knew they had no chance of winning this," says philosopher of science Robert Pennock of Michigan State University, East Lansing, an expert witness in Dover. "ID is on its way out," agrees evolutionary biologist Joel Cracraft of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who has been active in defending evolution. "[Creationists] will be avoiding that term."

Indeed, the leaders of the ID movement prefer a more subtle approach to undermine the teaching of evolution: Urge schools to teach the "controversy" over evolution. "We oppose mandating the teaching of ID," says John West of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, the leading promoter of ID. "We opposed that [El Tejon] class," which was laden with young-Earth creationism as well as ID; the institute also opposed the Dover policy. Their latest video for school districts, entitled "How to Teach the Controversy Legally," does not mention ID.

Such language is echoed in the draft Kansas Science Standards (Science, 4 November 2005, p. 754), which call on teachers to teach the evidence "for and against" evolution, as well as in the warning labels put on textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia (Science, 21 January 2005, p. 334). Much of this year's crop of antievolution legislation follows suit. A Michigan bill, for example, proposes that students "critically evaluate scientific theories including, but not limited to, the theories of global warming and evolution."

Given these shifting tactics, the battle over teaching evolution "isn't over," says Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science. "These people are well-financed and ideologues in the true sense, and they are not giving this up."