toledoblade.com --

COLUMBUS - Acknowledging a long-simmering public debate, the Ohio Board of Education will consider adopting science standards that require students to understand that there are challenges to evolutionary theory.

A committee's recommendation on the standards, made yesterday, will allow school districts to decide whether to discuss other theories about the development of life on Earth, including creationism and "intelligent design."

School districts eventually will use the standards to align their science curricula with Ohio's proficiency test.

"I hope it will be really clear what we expect, grade by grade," said Susan Tave Zelman, Ohio's superintendent of public instruction. "It was unfortunate that there was so much focus on the issue of intelligent design."

Evolution is the theory that life evolved from a single-cell organism. Intelligent design, which is popular among Christian conservatives, says that some guiding force such as a god or another intelligent being played a role in the creation and development of life. Some members of the state board of education suggested including intelligent design in the science standards during their development this year.

The board's standards committee met yesterday and voted to recommend to the full board a 75-page set of academic content standards for science, including an understanding of "how scientists today continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory."

The committee also adopted a definition of science that included half of the Ohio Academy of Science's definition, omitting the standards of evidence section.

The full 19-member board will have a public hearing next month about the standards with a vote for adoption planned for its December meeting.

By law, the Ohio Department of Education was required to begin developing the standards for all proficiency tests, including the forthcoming Ohio graduation test. Since the committee began its work, science - specifically how to address evolution in high school science classes - has been the subject of the most public input and media attention.

Standards committee member Deborah Owens Fink of Richfield said about 75 percent of the 20,000 phone calls, letters, and e-mail messages the committee received about the debate sought the inclusion of alternatives to evolution. That public response justified treating evolution differently from other scientific principles, she said.

"To disregard that input would be a sham of public policy," she said.

But Lynn Elfner, director of the Ohio Academy of Science, criticized the standards committee for treating evolution - with its religious undertones - differently than other scientific principles like gravity, light, color, quantum theory, continental drift, and atomic structure.

"Why single out evolution?" he said. "It's a political process at this point."

It is unclear how the new standards, when they are adopted, will directly affect classroom teaching and learning, Dr. Zelman said.

"Those are things we will be working on, what our curriculum models are, which we haven't done yet," she said.

At least one northwest Ohio school district already includes some discussion about alternatives to evolution.

"Anthony Wayne already teaches about the concepts in evolutionary theory from Darwin to Aristotle to creationism to other noted theories," said Susan Cross, a district spokeswoman. "The [new standards] may allow us to use the term `creationism' rather than `religious study' but we don't really anticipate any other changes."

Toledo Public Schools elementary teacher Sylvia Washburn was on the statewide committee that helped write the science standards. She said Ohio high school teachers offered a wide range of perspectives on how to address evolution and faith-based challenges to it.

"The emotions were mixed. Some felt, `yes, we needed to teach [alternatives to evolution].' Some thought it was a value thing, a church thing. Some teachers talked about it in response to their religious beliefs," Mrs. Washburn said.

But for as much attention as the debate has received at the state level, she does not expect it to affect how she teaches science in her second grade classroom at Beverly Elementary School.

"In 30 years of teaching, it's never come up," she said. "I've never had to deal with that topic."

Permanent Link