The New York Times, July 29, 2000 (front page)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/072900kansas-edu.html

THE STATES

Board Decision on Evolution Roils an Election in Kansas

By Pam Belluck

It is just a Kansas school board election, a primary election at that. But no one in Kansas or anywhere else is taking this race for granted.

Tens of thousands of dollars have been raised, some from out of state, whereas previous board candidates raised only a few hundred dollars. Candidates are taking the unusual step of running television commercials and are printing up leaflets and yard signs by the thousands.

Democrats are switching their party affiliation just to vote for school board candidates in the Republican primary. And in what political observers consider extraordinary, Kansas's highest-ranking Republicans – the governor and a United States senator -- have not only weighed in on the race, but have also endorsed opposing candidates in their own party.

"When was the last time you were even aware who was running for your state board of education?" asked Michael Davis, a law professor at the University of Kansas.

The frenzy is the upshot of a vote last August by the Kansas Board of Education, which removed evolution as an explanation for the origin of species from the state's science curriculum.

The decision, a 6-to-4 vote with conservative Republicans in the majority, reverberated around the country, where other states have faced recent battles between evolution and creationism. Kansas did not ban the teaching of evolution, leaving that option up to local school districts. But its decision meant that evolution would not be included in the state assessment tests that evaluate student performance, which may discourage teachers from devoting time to the subject. The board also removed from the curriculum the big bang theory of the origin of the universe.

Now, 5 of 10 board seats are up for election, and in 4 of the 5 there is a primary face-off on Aug. 1, with conservative Republicans who favor the new science standards being challenged by moderate Republicans who oppose them -- and are expected to try to overturn the standards if elected. In heavily Republican Kansas, the primary winners will be strongly favored to win in November.

More than a decade after the Supreme Court said states could not compel the teaching of creationism, evolution opponents have begun pressing state and local school boards to play down the importance of evolution by presenting it, alongside creationism and other theories, as just one unproven explanation.

Last October, state officials in Kentucky eliminated the word "evolution" but not the scientific theory from the school curriculum, substituting the phrase "change over time." In Oklahoma, officials recently ordered that textbooks carry a disclaimer about the certainty of evolution, similar to a step already taken by Alabama.

Evolution's defenders have been active too, winning last fall when New Mexico banned creationism and endorsed evolution in the science curriculum. New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and other states have considered, but defeated, proposals by evolution critics.

"It strikes me that evolution is even more of a litmus test than abortion now -- courtesy of the Kansas Board of Education," said Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political scientist. "It is really the defining characteristic of Kansas politics now."

At the time, the board's vote raised an outcry among many Kansans, and guaranteed that the issue would be revisited during this year's election. Still, no reliable polls have been released suggesting what might occur on Tuesday, though conservatives are typically better organized and have a better turnout in primaries.

The issue is even figuring in a hotly contested Congressional race for the district that borders Kansas City. The moderate Republican candidate, Greg Musil, has run television commercials mentioning the evolution vote and saying, "I'm embarrassed that Kansas is now being called a backward state."

Since the board's vote, local school board members say, more districts are talking about teaching creationism or the "intelligent designer" theory, which holds that the universe is so complex that some intelligent being must have created it. The vote also emboldened some teachers who had been quietly teaching alternatives to evolution.

Other districts, however, have resolved that they would teach evolution exclusively.

In the school board races, Gov. Bill Graves, who last August called the board's decision "terrible" and "tragic," has endorsed moderate Republicans. Senator Sam Brownback has endorsed conservatives.

Groups like People for the American Way sponsored a re-enactment of the Scopes "monkey trial" at the University of Kansas this month, starring Ed Asner, a native Kansan. Proponents of nonevolutionary theories, like Phillip Johnson, a University of California law professor who believes in "intelligent design," have donated money to conservative candidates. Local groups have formed to defend or attack the board's vote, including a political action committee helping conservative candidates.

Some Democrats have switched parties just for Tuesday's primary.

"I think this election is so critical to Kansas children that I was compelled to suck it up and change parties," said Lois Culver, 69, of Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City. Mrs. Culver, who sees the new standards as an effort to "put religion in the schools," plans to vote for Sue Gamble, a moderate Republican who opposes the board's vote, and then change back to Democrat.

Mrs. Gamble, a member of the Shawnee Mission school board, said the new standards could "put students at a disadvantage on a national level. You need to know about dinosaurs, the age of the earth." She worries that "students from out of state won't want to come here and study because they feel the standards won't be up to snuff."

Her opponent, Linda Holloway, a conservative who was chairwoman of the school board when the evolution decision was made, has raised $90,000, an extraordinary sum in school board races. Mrs. Gamble has raised $36,000.

Mrs. Holloway, a former teacher, said she supported the new science standards because she believed evolution had been made to seem too important to science.

"I believe we should teach evolution in the schools but I also believe that if local districts want to teach that or other theories, that should be up to them," she said. "Gosh, there could have been a lot bigger things that we could have done. This was pretty mild."

In Wichita, the conservative incumbent, Mary Douglass Brown, said that the new standards "put a little crack in the foundation" of evolution scientists, "their money, their books, their schools."

"There's a lot of money in evolution," she said. "To me, it's pseudoscience."

Mrs. Brown, a former teacher, said the board left in references to "micro-evolution," changes within organisms that "people can see," like bacteria becoming disease-resistant.

"I don't believe that humans descended from apes, no," she said. "How come there's still apes running around loose and there are humans? Why did some of them decide to evolve and some did not?"

Such ideas propelled people like Bill Skaer, a veterinarian, and Burt Humburg, a medical student, to switch to the Republican Party to vote against Mrs. Brown.

And they spurred Carol Rupe, a former Wichita school board member, to challenge her.

Ms. Rupe said she was "embarrassed when suddenly, after the vote last summer, we were called by our friends and relatives in other states wondering what kind of state we lived in. We said it was just a few people. But my goodness, if those few are re-elected, then it reflects on the entire state."