The Irascible Professor SM Irreverent Commentary on the State of Education in America Today by Dr. Mark H. Shapiro "We are the products of editing rather than of authorship.".... ...George Wald.
Commentary of the Day - May 31, 2002: Scopes Revisited? The Kansas Board of Education's 1999 Decision on Evolution. Guest commentary by Tina Blue. In 1999 the Kansas State Board of Education (BOE) voted to alter the guidelines for state science tests, eliminating questions that pertained to macroevolution (the idea that through natural selection and adaptation new species arise over time out of already existing species), the Big Bang theory of the origins of the cosmos, and the vast stretches of geological time. It is important to understand what the BOE did and did not do, because there has been a lot of confusion over that point, and some members of the board have used that confusion to obscure the intent of their action. The BOE did not forbid the teaching of evolution (not even of macroevolution), nor did they introduce "creation science" into the state's testing standards. But it is a given that local curricula are to a large degree influenced by awareness at the local level of what a school district's students will be required to know in order to do well on state-level assessment tests. By eliminating macroevolution from the testing standards, the BOE signaled local school boards that it would be safe to eliminate it from local curricula if they chose to do so. As then BOE chairman Linda Holloway put it, they returned the decision to the local level.
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