Result
The Kansas Board of Education voted 6–4 August 9, 2005 to include greater criticism of evolution in its school science standards, but it decided to send the standards to an outside academic for review before taking a final vote. The standards received final approval on November 8, 2005. The new standards were approved by 6 to 4, reflecting the makeup of religious conservatives on the board. In July 2006 the Board of Standards issued a "rationale statement" which claimed that the current science curriculum standards do not include intelligent design. Members of the scientific community critical of the standards contended that the board's statement was misleading in that they contained a "significant editorializing that supports the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design network’s campaign position that Intelligent Design is not included in the standards", the standards did "say that students should learn about ID, and that ID content ought to be in the standards", and that the standards presented the controversy over intelligent design as a scientific one, denying the mainstream scientific view.
Kansas joined Ohio in adopting the Discovery Institute's Critical Analysis of Evolution public school science standards during that period. While other states were backing away from teaching alternatives to evolution, the Oklahoma House passed a bill Thursday, March 2, 2006 that contained Discovery Institute language encouraging schools to expose students to alternative views about the origin of life. Popular reaction included the creation of the intelligent design parody Pastafarianism (the worship of a Flying Spaghetti Monster). Its founder insisted it should be offered as a "third" theory on origins, suggesting possible legal action if it was not included and intelligent design was.
On August 1, 2006, 4 of the 6 conservative Republicans who approved the Critical Analysis of Evolution classroom standards lost their seats in a primary election. The moderate Republican and liberal Democrats gaining seats, largely supported by Governor Kathleen Sebelius, vowed to overturn the 2005 school science standards and adopt those recommended by a State Board Science Hearing Committee that were rejected by the previous board.
One of the members who lost her seat, Connie Morris, a conservative from St. Francis in the northwest corner of the state, pointed to the "liberal media" for her loss, noting that "liberal opportunists" do not mind "slandering people and harming their families and their reputation and their business and their communities and their state ... It's a shame, and I feel bad for them when they face God on Judgment Day." Although four born-again Christians remained on the Board, she believed that the new board would waste no time adopting new science standards, expecting that in the following January, when the new members are sworn in, the Board would rescind existing standards and adopt new ones that "let government schools teach children that we are no more than chaotic, random mutants."
On February 13, 2007, the Board voted 6 to 4 to reject the amended science standards enacted in 2005. The definition of science was once again returned to "the search for natural explanations for what is observed in the universe."
Read more about this topic: Kansas Evolution Hearings
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