Kansas Education Board Deny Supporting Intelligent Design Over Evolution

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Three State Board of Education members who drafted proposed science standards contend they're not taking a position on intelligent design, but some Kansas scientists think they're pushing it as an alternative to evolution.

An ongoing debate over how evolution should be taught has again brought international attention to Kansas. Public hearings in May attracted journalists from Canada, France, Great Britain and Japan.

The latest proposed standards are designed to expose public school students to more criticism of evolution. The recommendations were approved last week by board Chairman Steve Abrams, and members Kathy Martin and Connie Morris. All are skeptical of some parts of evolutionary theory.

The entire board was to review their draft Wednesday and decide whether it needed more work. Conservatives have a 6-4 majority, so much of what the three members proposed _ if not all of it _ is likely to survive.

The standards determine how fourth-, seventh- and 10th graders are tested on science. They currently describe evolution as a key concept for students to learn before graduating from high school, treating it as the best explanation for how life developed and changed over time.

State law requires the board to update its academic standards regularly, setting up this year's debate over evolution.

In 1999, the Kansas board deleted most references to evolution from the science standards, bringing international condemnation and ridicule to Kansas. Elections the next year resulted in a less conservative board, which led to the current, evolution-friendly standards. Conservative Republicans recaptured the board's majority in 2004 elections.

Battles over evolution also have occurred in recent years in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The three board members had four days of hearings in May, during which witnesses criticized evolutionary theory that natural chemical processes may have created the first building blocks of life, that all life has descended from a common origin and that man and apes share a common ancestor.

Their proposed standards don't specifically mention intelligent design, except to say the standards don't take a position.

But intelligent design advocates organized the case against evolution during the public hearings. Intelligent design says some features of the natural world are so complex and well-ordered that they are best explained by an intelligent cause.

Many scientists view intelligent design as another form of creationism, and national and state science groups boycotted the public hearings, saying they were rigged against evolution. As a result, no scientist testified in favor of evolution.

Circulated Monday was a newsletter from Morris, in which she derided evolution as an ''age-old fairy tale,'' sometimes defended with ''anti-God contempt and arrogance.'' She wrote that evolution is ''a theory in crisis'' and headlined one section of her newsletter "The Evolutionists are in Panic Mode!"