Evolution dispute to go public in May hearings

TOPEKA - Experts on evolution will be invited to Topeka in May for six days of public debate on how the state's schools should teach science.

A subcommittee of three conservative members of the State Board of Education decided Monday to schedule hearings instead of reviewing written papers to resolve the dispute over how evolution should be taught.

The decision to hold hearings was praised by conservatives who want to insert language in the standards to encourage more critical analysis of evolution.

But critics who favor keeping the expectation that students should know and understand the theory of evolution said these public hearings lack credibility because board members lack the expertise to determine what's good science.

Steve Abrams, chairman of the 10-member state board and of the subcommittee, said he thinks hearings will help.

"I hope that we come out with a greater understanding," Abrams said. The hearings should help people understand each other's positions and what is good science, he said.

Harry McDonald, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, said the hearings are just a ploy to introduce intelligent design into classrooms as a competing idea.

"They need to stage something that gets them a lot of notoriety and allows them to judge what is good science," said McDonald, who favors the current standards, which expect students to understand evolution.

Abrams said board members have not predetermined the outcome of the hearings. Abrams said he expects the experts to question and debate each other at the hearings, but this will not be a trial.

Hearing details will be determined later.

The board subcommittee talked Monday about recruiting people to conduct the hearings from the 26-person committee that was appointed last fall to draft standards.

The hearing conductors will decide how many people to invite on each side of the debate and how the hearings will run.

The majority of the standard-writing group recommended standards that include evolution as an important concept in biology, but eight members of that group submitted an alternative version, called the minority report, that takes a more critical approach to evolution.

Copies of both drafts of the standards are available online at www.ksde.org along with a dozen scientific evaluations of the minority report.

Steve Case, chairman of the standard-writing committee and a professor at the University of Kansas, won't be one of the hearing conductors because he thinks the hearings will be a sham, he said in a statement to the state board.

"I have worked for many years to build my credibility, and I am unwilling to spend it to prop up these hearings," said Case, who thinks credible scientists will avoid the hearings to keep from making intelligent design appear to be a viable alternative.

John Calvert, managing director of the Intelligent Design Network, applauded the board's decision to hold public hearings.

"Where is the public going to hear the minority side of the story if you don't hold hearings?" Calvert said. "The entire strategy of the majority is to avoid any public debate."

The state board is in the middle of a scheduled review of state science standards, and will likely approve a new draft in late summer.

Because conservative Republicans control six of the 10 state board seats, some change is considered likely.

When conservatives last controlled the board in 1999, they voted to de-emphasize evolution in the standards, leaving the decision of whether to teach evolution up to local school boards.

That decision earned the state ridicule nationwide. Voters then elected a moderate majority to the board, and the moderates restored evolution to the standards in the spring of 2001.