Before a packed house earlier this week, the Ohio board of education hosted a two-hour panel discussion on the teaching of evolution and how it should be handled within the state's new science standards. Representatives of the "intelligent design" movement, who believe that life is so complex that some sort of intelligent designer must be involved, and thus that that natural selection is not the sole force behind evolution, argued that their views should be included in classroom discussions of evolution. In response, scientists from two major universities argued that the theory of evolution has grown in strength through decades of repeated experimentation and discovery, while intelligent design theory has not been tested. There is no real controversy among scientists over evolution, they argued, and science's practice of endlessly testing evidence means that not all ideas deserve equal treatment in the classroom. The debate was prompted by a new set of science standards to be voted on by the state school board this year, standards that are opposed by creationists of various stripes. Ohio's old science standards received a grade of F from Professor Lawrence Lerner, who evaluated the treatment of evolution in the science standards of all 50 states in a September 2000 report for the Fordham Foundation. Unlike the old standards, which skirted any mention of evolution, Ohio's new (draft) science standards treat this topic in exemplary fashion. Lerner says they would earn a grade of A.
"Ohio Board Hears Debate on Alternative to Darwinism," by Francis X. Clines, The New York Times, March 12, 2002
"Ohio's New Standards Earn an A from National Science Standards Expert," National Center for Science Education, March 11, 2002, and "Ohio on the Brink: Will Creationists Ruin Science Education in the Buckeye State?" by Lawrence S. Lerner, March 11, 2002
"Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching Evolution in the States," by Lawrence S. Lerner, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, September 2000