Conclusion
At its March, 2009 meeting, the Texas State Board of Education will take a final vote on the science curriculum standards. The standards will be in place for the next 10 years and will significantly influence the selection of science textbooks for the state of Texas (and beyond).
Regrettably, inaccurate statements are now included in the current draft of the standards. These changes were adopted on the recommendation of Board Chairman Don McLeroy. To bolster his argument in favor of the changes, McLeroy presented quotes from various "authoritative" sources and passed them off as supporting his own doubts about evolution. By removing the "fine print" from his list of quotes, Dr. McLeroy forced his fellow board members to base their vote on incomplete and misleading information.
When the chair of the state school board uses out-of-context quotes in order to persuade others to act as he desires, he is undercutting the trust that has been placed in him. When he apparently plagiarizes those quotes from a website and then attempts to pass them off as the result of his own research, he is displaying a disappointing lack of academic integrity.
Texas students deserve a better example.
When the quotes are read in their orignal contexts, it is clear that the authors’ intent was the opposite of chairman McLeroy's. They were not professing doubt concerning the sufficiency of evolutionary processes to account for the patterns observed in the fossil record. On the contrary, modern evolutionary theory and the inference of common ancestry are quite powerfully supported by scientific evidence. Texas students should be given the opportunity to learn about this evidence. Therefore, we strongly encourage the Texas State Board of Education to reject this ill-conceived change.
Unfortunately, the Texas State Board of Education has a well-established history of adopting last-minute changes that run counter to the advice of professionals who were appointed by the board to write the state's curriculum standards. We caution the Board to be wary of any last-minute changes to the science standards which may be proposed in March. Obviously, quotations offered in support of such changes may not be presented with the appropriate context. Board members should demand the time to study the proposed changes before a vote is required.
When science is taught with integrity, it breeds academic excellence. We strongly encourage the Texas State Board of Education members to keep integrity foremost in their minds as they vote on the science standards in March.
And, if January's meeting was any indication, they might want to bring a hard hat to that meeting.
Just in case.