Many States Flunk Evolution Test Report’S Author Says Controversy About Politics, Not Science

Seventy-five years after the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, a national organization of scientists gives schools in 19 states unsatisfactory grades for neglecting to teach evolution.

The report, released last week by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, grades 49 states and the District of Columbia on the basis of how well evolution is included in the state science education standards. California received the highest rank. Kansas, whose standards were described as “disgraceful,” got the lowest grade.

The report compiled by Lawrence Lerner, a professor emeritus in the physics and astronomy department at California State University in Long Beach, was sponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Although nonpartisan, the foundation has supported the education ideas of Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush.

Lerner presented the paper - “The Teaching of Evolution in U.S. Schools: Where Politics, Religion and Science Converge” - at a forum of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Linda Holloway, former chairman of the Kansas State Board of Education, said the report was deceptive and “very unfair.”

“Clearly they have an ax to grind about evolution,” she said in a telephone interview.

Evolution “is not a controversial issue among scientists, nor among most of the world’s educated persons,” Lerner wrote in the report. The controversy over evolution “is not really about science, but about religion and politics,” pitting science educators against those “who assert that evolution has not taken place (and) that it is `only fair’ to present creationist views to students in tandem with evolution.”

In the report, Lerner called creation science “a pseudoscientific rival to evolution that the courts have repeatedly held to be thinly veiled religion.”

Creation science is teaching that supports the view that the Earth and humankind were created by God. Evolution stems from the scientific theories of 19th century British naturalist Charles Darwin.

At a news conference, Lerner said that despite continuing controversy over evolution, “the situation is very much in flux. I have high hopes for the future.”

The education standards enacted in recent years are likely to lead to competition among the states, he said.

“The states tend to vie with each other,” he said. “They say `Jeez, you know, we don’t have as high standards as our neighboring state, let’s do something about it.”’

Speaking at the same news conference, Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education Inc., said the lack of evolution teaching in a state seriously hampers the scientific education of students in its schools.

“Evolution is a basic organizing principle in several sciences,” she said. “It’s fact of the universe that change has taken place; this is shown in astronomy, geology and biology. You really can’t consider yourself to be fully educated if you don’t understand evolution as a part of science.”

The Lerner report assigns a grade to each state based on how thoroughly or scantily it treats evolution in science education standards.

California, Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey, North Carolina and Rhode Island each scores 100. Among other states, Washington receives an 86 (“brief, straightforward account of evolution”) and Michigan an 84 (“a well-organized treatment of evolution”). Both are B’s.

New York gets a 68 (“this otherwise satisfactory document suffers from sloppy organization and inclusion of creationist jargon”) and Texas a 64 (“brief but satisfactory no human evolution”). Both are C’s.

The report reserves its most scathing reviews for states receiving an “F”: Wyoming, Maine, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Florida, Alabama, North Dakota, Georgia, Mississippi, West Virginia, Kansas and Tennessee.

“It seems the Scopes trial is still under way in Tennessee,” the report says. “None of the sketchy biology coverage makes sense.”

The Lerner report gives its lowest grade - F-minus - to Kansas. The state’s educational standard “avoids all discussion of the age of the Earth or the universe, or any other topic touching on the history of the Earth or universe,” the report says.

The Kansas board of education voted to drop evolution from state science standards last year. But board elections this November are very likely to change the panel from support of creationism to support of evolution.

Asked about the report’s ranking of Kansas, state education department spokeswoman Kathy Toelkes said “I don’t have any comment on it other than I don’t think we’re surprised.”

Holloway, however, said that the report was part of “a campaign of deception” and that all districts in Kansas are still teaching evolution.

“All we did was allow local groups to decide how they wanted to teach evolution,” she said. “That is a reasonable thing to do.”

The famous trial of science teacher John Scopes took place 75 years ago in Dayton, Tenn. With fiery orator and ex-presidential contender William Jennings Bryan as prosecutor and celebrated Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow for the defense, the trial came to symbolize the clash between modern scientific ideas and traditional religion in 20th century America.

Scopes deliberately violated a Tennessee state law that barred the teaching of evolution. Despite Darrow’s impassioned defense, the teacher was convicted of violating the law. But the conviction was overturned on appeal. Scopes died in 1970.