Changes to Kansas’ science standards linked to creationist group

By Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell

“The standard the board of education adopted violates the establishment of church and state and shouldn’t be taught as a scientific theory,” says science teacher Steve Case, a member of the writing committee that wrote the science standards rejected by the Kansas State Board of Education.

The debate over the inclusion of evolution in Kansas’ science curriculum took another turn last month when members of Kansas Citizens for Science announced they had uncovered evidence that a creationist group was the primary author of alterations made to the science standards adopted by the Kansas State Board of Education last year. KCFS, a self-described group of “parents, educators, scientists, students, and others to support the teaching of sound science in public schools,” charges that the Creation Science Association of Mid-America (CSAMA) had a strong influence on the new standards.

“What we have is not legal evidence, but we have compelling evidence,” said Jack Krebs, a KCFS member who presented the evidence at the Dec. 7 meeting of the Kansas State Board of Education.

The science standards the board adopted in August upheld the teaching of microevolution, which simply states that a species can change form, but it left the teaching of macroevolution, which states that a species can evolve into a new species, up to the local districts. The newly adopted Kansas standards also reject other acceptable scientific theories, such as the Big Bang Theory, which holds that the universe was created 20 billion years ago from a giant cosmic explosion. Although the board contends that these theories were not mandated to be removed from the curricula, Kansas’ students will not be tested on these theories.

A 27-member writing committee composed of scientists, educators, and curriculum experts from across the state had originally written the standards over a 13-month period. The board then rejected the work of the writing committee and instead chose a “compromise” version.

“The version we had prepared covered science standards based on national curriculums,” said writing committee member Steve Case, who is also a KCFS member. “They didn’t say anything about creationism. The standard the board of education adopted violates the establishment of church and state and shouldn’t be taught as a scientific theory. The only place their wording could be is in a social studies class as a descriptive religious program, such as comparative religion.”

Several drafts were written and submitted to the board of education before last August. Some had been submitted by the original writing committee and others had been submitted by a group calling themselves the “Citizen’s Drafting Committee,” which was made up of a group of creationists that included Tom Willis, CSAMA leader, and Celtie Johnson, who heads The National Committee for Science Education (NCSE). NCSE describes itself on its Web site as “a group of private citizens who got together for a concentrated effort to edit/revise the Science Curriculum Standards prepared by the writing committee.”

The group explains its beliefs in this way: “Because there is no way that time can be reversed, and there is no way that another beginning can be re-enacted to see what happens, it is concluded that the study of origins should not be taught as science. At best the topic of origins is conjecture.”

On the NCSE Web site, the group takes credit for writing Trial 4A, an alternative draft of the science standards that Kansas Board of Education member Steve Abrams presented to the board in May 1999 and, according to Case, implied he had written. “This is the early draft of the Kansas Science Curriculum, which was assembled by the Citizens’ Draft Committee of NCSE,” Johnson writes on the site.

Trial 4A was eventually rejected by the State Board of Education and a newly formed subcommittee met in late summer at a school in Hays, Kan. The subcommittee, according to board member Scott Hill, was composed of himself and board members Abrams and Harold Voth as well as State Department of Education staff member Steve Adams.

In a recent phone interview, Hill emphatically said of Trial Draft 4A that he told the board he “didn’t want to work off of that draft but wanted to work off of the draft that the science committee had submitted.”

However, when asked to describe his role on the subcommittee, Hill explained, “I guess I was there as more of a facilitator to help them reach a compromise between the wording that Abrams had and the wording that the science committee had. The press and the other board members were pushing for a compromise.”

Hill denied later in the interview that it was a compromise between Abrams and the science committee. “I was very careful not to say that,” he asserted. Instead he said that it was a compromise as to what the “board would deem acceptable.”

Confusion surrounds exactly who is involved in the compromise. Case asserts that the compromise was between the Citizens’ Drafting Com mittee, which had enlisted Abrams to act on its behalf, and the 27-member science writing committee. He says that the final version of Trial 4A, which was written by the Citizens’ Drafting Committee, was called Draft CDC/8A and was the document used by the four-member subcommittee.

“That is not true,” said Hill. “If there are similarities, they (the Citizens’ Drafting Committee) are the ones who copied what we had. We did not use that document (CDC/8A) and the wording was developed by four people sitting in a room.” According to Krebs, this is impossible, since evidence indicates Draft 8A was revised June 26, 1999, and the subcommittee didn’t meet until July 29, 1999.

On both the NCSE and CSAMA Web sites, the groups take at least partial responsibility for the standards adopted by the Kansas board. The NCSE’s Johnson writes of Draft CDC/8A, “The Citizen’s Drafting Committee prepared several drafts of the proposed Kansas Science Stan dards, eventually arriving at the Citizens’ Draft Committee A8 version shown here. This is not the version that was passed by the State Board of Education, but is close.”

It is very close to the one passed by the board, according to Case. “Of the 34 additions that were made that day by the subcommittee, only one is not found in the creationists’ draft. Further more, of the 34 additions, 16 are only found, in part or in their entirety, in Draft 8A (the Citizens’ Drafting Committee version).”

Willis writes on his CSAMA site, “The purpose of this document is to present the truth regarding the chain of events that led up to the ‘Kansas Science Tornado,’ which was incorrectly or incompletely reported by the media. We can speak with a certain amount of authority on this current topic of vital concern, for a number of the members of the Creation Science Association of Mid-America were personally and intimately involved over the course of many months.”

A document Case supplied, which he says is the document history of the computer file containing Draft CDC/8A as downloaded from the NCSE Web site, supports Johnson’s and Willis’ claims. “This gives a sort of history of the document,” says Case. “What you can reconstruct from this document is that it was saved five times by Tom Willis — or someone working on his machine in a folder containing other CSAMA files.

“The file was then saved onto a floppy disk. It appears it was saved on some sort of public machine and e-mailed to Steve Abrams. Dr. Abrams saved it on his machine in his windows/TEMP file. It was then returned to the creationist group.”

Abrams could not be reached for comment for this article and Linda Holloway, the chairperson of the Kansas State Board of Education, did not return calls. But Hill said he could not say if Abrams had contact with Willis and exchanged the Draft 8A, and doesn’t think such claims should be taken seriously.

“I can’t believe that anyone would give credence to this whacko individual making these claims,” he said. “I mean, this guy tears into the board and what if Abrams did have contact with Tom Willis? Because Tom Willis had contact with anyone on the board doesn’t mean it (the science standards) should be thrown out. To say that board members cannot have contact with the public is so undemocratic.”

However, both Case and Krebs are credible members of the science community. Case is a nationally recognized science teacher with numerous awards. He is currently on staff at the University of Kansas and describes himself as “walking that fine line of being a scientist and a teacher of science.”

Krebs is a former curriculum director and a high school math teacher. Although he was not a part of the science writing committee, he says he has been involved in the issue of writing standards for curricula for a decade and holds a degree in anthropology.

Krebs appeared at the board of education’s Jan. 11 meeting to directly ask Hill and Abrams why they have stated that they are the authors of the adopted science standards when he believes that Tom Willis and his group of the citizens’ writing committee wrote most of it.

“My analysis shows that only two out of 240 complete sentences added to the standards, less than 1 percent, of the additions were not taken verbatim from Willis’ draft,” Krebs told the board.

The board did not answer Krebs’ questions. “The standards committee refused to listen to board input,” Hill said in his interview. “They ignored hundreds of public comments and had an agenda of their own — to indoctrinate kids on evolution. If a person has a specific problem with it (the new standards), they should address it with the board.”

Science groups from all over the world have addressed the Kansas State Board of Education with their concerns, including the National Science Foundation. The board was forced to rephrase the standards when three national science organizations refused the state’s request to use their copyrighted materials in the standards.

“We had even included a ‘statement of tolerance’ in our standards, which told children that if the teaching of evolution conflicted with their beliefs, they should consult with their parents or clergy,” Case explains. “That sounded like a reasonable compromise to me and the board rejected that.”

In the Dec. 7 board meeting, the board voted to send the standards out for independent review. “This costly and time-consuming project,” says Case, “merely prolongs the rejection of these standards and allows the board to divert attention from the fact that a religious-right group secretly authored them.”

Case estimates that the review will cost the state about $18,000-$20,000 at a time when Kansas is having a hard time finding funding for public schools.

“The issue is really not about science anymore,” added Krebs. “It’s about politics.”