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This fall, the Ohio State Board of Education will finalize science education
standards for the state’s public schools. These standards have become the
latest battleground over the teaching of evolution. Ohio’s curriculum also
has become the first major opportunity for evolution opponents to attempt to
use a new federal education bill to bolster their efforts.
Opposition to teaching evolution in Ohio is nothing new. These standards will
replace existing curriculum guidelines that, responding to earlier pressure,
avoid mention of the term evolution. In his 2000 report for the Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation, science educator Lawrence Lerner graded the treatment of evolution
in state science standards. He gave Ohio an “F” (Geotimes, December
2000).
Lerner says that he would give the initial draft standards, developed by a 45-member
writing team of scientists and educators, an “A.” And that explains
why evolution opponents, led by a conservative Christian group called Science
Excellence for All Ohioans, are working so hard to rewrite the draft. Their
original proposal was to drop such controversial concepts as the age of Earth
and to downplay the certainty of evolutionary principles. But their real push
has been for inclusion of intelligent design creationism whenever evolution
is discussed.
Several state board members are receptive to the intelligent design approach.
When it was pointed out that no other state has adopted standards that incorporate
teaching of intelligent design, board member Deborah Owens-Fink noted that Ohio
had an opportunity to be “on the cutting edge.” The board has held
several hearings on this matter, including a panel discussion in March. On one
side were intelligent design supporters Stephen Meyer and Jonathan Wells from
the Discovery Institute’s Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, and
on the other side were Brown University biologist Ken Miller and Case Western
Reserve University physicist Lawrence Krauss. The session drew over a thousand
attendees and had to be moved to a nearby auditorium.
During the discussion period, a questioner asked whether a recently enacted
federal education bill, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, required that
alternative theories to evolution be taught in public schools. The reference
was to language added to the Senate version of the bill by Sen. Rick Santorum
(R-Penn.) singling out evolution as a controversial theory and emphasizing the
need to teach the controversy.
The Discovery Institute’s Meyer answered that the act did require teaching
alternative theories and urged the board to follow the federal law. Having anticipated
the question, however, Miller had the text of the act on his computer. When
he executed a search for any reference to the Santorum language, no reference
appeared. The Santorum language was not in the law.
What’s in a statute?
Who’s right? Because the House and Senate had passed different versions
of the bill for the No Child Left Behind Act, a bicameral conference committee
— chaired by House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John
Boehner (R-Ohio) — was appointed to work out differences. The resulting
conference report described the changes made to the earlier bills in order to
craft the final bill. One of those changes was to drop the Santorum language
from the final bill, which was subsequently passed by both houses and signed
by the president in January to become federal statute. Just as Miller demonstrated,
the Santorum language was not in the law.
But the conference committee did not entirely discard the Santorum language.
Even though they removed it from the bill, they added a substantially revised
version to an explanatory statement appended to the conference report. That
revision reads: “The Conferees recognize that a quality science education
should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science
from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science.
Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution),
the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific
views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific
discoveries can profoundly affect society.’’
Such explanatory statements serve the same role as reports that committees prepare
for bills that they are sending to the House or Senate floor. These reports
are the principal tool for interpreting bills and establishing their legislative
history. For example, appropriations bills contain little more than a string
of program names and dollar figures, while their accompanying reports provide
the detailed explanation of how the money should be spent. Report language may
not have the force of law, but woe to the agency that ignores those spending
instructions as they face the appropriators’ ire (and budget cuts) the
following year.
That is not the situation for the No Child Left Behind Act. As pointed out by
law school professor Dennis Hirsch from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio,
the Santorum language does not accompany or interpret any bill language. It
stands alone as a non-statutory opinion of the conferees, its primary purpose
being to appease a vocal constituency (and an aggravated Santorum).
Muddying the waters
By now it may seem that the confusion over report language as opposed to bill
language is a fairly understandable one for the layperson. And it is, particularly
when the lawmakers themselves are blurring the issue. In a letter dated March
15, Boehner and House Subcommittee on the Constitution Chairman Steve Chabot
(R-Ohio) wrote to the school board asserting that “the Santorum language
is now part of the law.” On March 14, Santorum wrote in a Washington Times
editorial (titled “Illiberal Education in Ohio”) that “the new
law includes a science education provision,” then quoted the explanatory
statement language. Wrong and wrong.
In the same editorial, Santorum went a step further. Having convinced all but
eight of his colleagues to support his “innocuous” resolution amidst
a last-minute flurry of voting that followed six weeks of floor debate, Santorum
now portrayed their votes as support for the teaching of intelligent design.
He specifically cited Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) as a supporter. In a responding
letter to the editor, however, Kennedy asserted that the implication of the
vote was “simply not true,” then went on to state: “Unlike biological
evolution, ‘intelligent design’ is not a genuine scientific theory
and, therefore, has no place in the curriculum of our nation’s public school
science classes.” In a letter to the National Center for Science Education,
the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep.
George Miller (Calif.), wrote that “the report language should not be construed
to promote specific topics within the subject areas … [S]uch decisions
are best left to the scientific community, rather than legislators.”
The eventual outcome of this debate in Ohio is far from certain. According to
an analysis by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, a majority of the school board remains
undecided. Adding to the uncertainty, the legislature is considering a bill
that would strip the school board of its authority to grant final approval for
state science standards, handing that responsibility over to the legislature.
Regardless of how the standards come out, the real test comes with the decisions
of individual school districts on what should be taught. One district has already
declared its intention to teach intelligent design, and others are likely to
follow. Perhaps the only certainty arising from the Ohio experience is that
the Santorum language will become a staple of anti-evolution efforts in the
guise of “federal law requires thou shalt
teach … .” As that occurs, the scientific community must be there
to explain the distinctions and straighten out the facts.
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