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Ohio's current education standards for science do not use the word evolution. Instead, they recommend that students study changes over time.

However, the Ohio State Board of Education is now developing new science standards that have ignited fresh debates over the validity of intelligent design theory in both the board and the state legislature. If intelligent design is added to the board of education's standards proposal, Ohio would be the first state to do so.

Unlike Ohio's old guidelines, the new proposal uses the word evolution. A 41-member writing team of primary, secondary, and college science teachers drafted the 97-page document. The proposal is scheduled to be in final form for a board of education vote next December.

Controversy regarding the proposal began to flare at a January 13 meeting of the board's science standards subcommittee when some members opposed limiting the study of life origins to evolutionary theory.

School Board President Jennifer L. Sheets told The Washington Times last week that no board members are asking for evolution to be removed from the proposal, but some subcommittee members are asking that other viewpoints be included. Five of the nine board members on the subcommittee favor adding intelligent design, reports The New York Times. Three members have offered no opinion.

The lone subcommittee member against adding intelligent design, Martha W. Wise, told The New York Times that she is a creationist and believes in God. However, she said, those beliefs have no place in a science classroom.

At the January 13 meeting, school board members heard from John H. Calvert, a Kansas City lawyer and cofounder of the Intelligent Design Network. In his presentation, Calvert said the current draft presents only evidence that "inhibits theism."

"The standards are being written so that not only is naturalism the only given answer, they are being written so that the design hypothesis will not even be mentioned," Calvert told the committee. "The kids won't even be told about the existence of the hypothesis and the fact that credentialed scientists have identified evidence that tends to confirm it."

After Calvert's speech, school board member Michael Cochran said the team that prepared the proposal was not philosophically diverse enough. It clearly favored evolution, he said, and all six of the focus groups invited to give input to the team were also pro-evolution.

At the end of the meeting, the subcommittee asked the writing team to amend 10th-grade science with a requirement to "know that some scientists support the theory of intelligent design, which postulates that the influence of intelligence is a viable alternative explanation."

To further discuss the matter, the subcommittee has planned a March 11 public forum that will hear from advocates of evolution and intelligent design.

Jonathan Wells, a molecular and cell biologist from the University of California-Berkeley, and Jody F. Sjoren, a medical illustrator and cofounder of the Intelligent Design Network, will represent intelligent design. The evolution advocates will be Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University, and Lawrence M. Kraus, a theoretical physicist from Case Western Reserve University.

Kraus is part of a new group formed to counter Ohio's intelligent design push. Ohio Citizens for Science (OCS) announced its formation February 7. "Science should speak with the same kind of fervor as people who are literally the enemies of science," Kraus told Cleveland's Plain Dealer. The group focuses on putting evolution in the school standards, and keeping intelligent design off. Another organization, Science Excellence for all Ohioans, advocates including alternative theories.

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February (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46