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The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit membership organization in the United States whose stated mission is to educate the press and the public on the scientific and educational aspects of controversies surrounding the teaching of evolution and climate change, and to provide information and resources to schools, parents, and other citizens working to keep those topics in public school science education. Based in Oakland, California, it claims 4,500 members that include scientists, teachers, clergy, and citizens of varied religious and political affiliations. The Center opposes the teaching of religious views in science classes in America's public schools; it does this through initiatives such as Project Steve. The Center has been called the United States' "leading anti-creationist organization". The Center is affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative Christian think tank in the United States. The CSC lobbies for the inclusion of creationism in the form of intelligent design (ID) in public-school science curricula as an explanation for the origins of life and the universe while trying to cast doubt on the theory of evolution. These positions have been rejected by the scientific community, which identifies intelligent design as pseudoscientific neo-creationism, whereas the theory of evolution is overwhelmingly accepted as a matter of scientific consensus.
The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific idea of intelligent design (ID), which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The movement arose out of the creation science movement in the United States, and is driven by a small group of proponents.
The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) was the fourth Texas state standardized test previously used in grade 3-8 and grade 9-11 to assess students' attainment of reading, writing, math, science, and social studies skills required under Texas education standards. It is developed and scored by Pearson Educational Measurement with close supervision by the Texas Education Agency. Though created before the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, it complied with the law. It replaced the previous test, called the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), in 2002.
Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins is a controversial 1989 school-level supplementary textbook written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, edited by Charles Thaxton and published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). The textbook endorses the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design – the argument that life shows evidence of being designed by an intelligent agent which is not named specifically in the book, although proponents understand that it refers to the Christian God. The overview chapter was written by young Earth creationist Nancy Pearcey. They present various polemical arguments against the scientific theory of evolution. Before publication, early drafts used cognates of "creationist". After the Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court ruling that creationism is religion and not science, these were changed to refer to "intelligent design". The second edition published in 1993 included a contribution written by Michael Behe.
The "teach the controversy" campaign of the Discovery Institute seeks to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design as part of its attempts to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses. Scientific organizations point out that the institute claims that there is a scientific controversy where in fact none exists.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is the branch of the government of Texas responsible for public education in Texas in the United States. The agency is headquartered in the William B. Travis State Office Building in downtown Austin. Mike Morath, formerly a member of the Dallas Independent School District's board of trustees, was appointed commissioner of education by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Dec. 14, 2015, and began serving on Jan. 4, 2016.
Barbara Carroll Forrest is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She is a critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute.
Cheri Pierson Yecke is an author and retired conservative Republican professor in the United States.
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design (ID), ultimately found by the court to not be science. In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book. The prominence of this textbook during the trial was such that the case is sometimes referred to as the Dover Panda Trial, a name which recalls the popular name of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, 80 years earlier. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge's decision sparked considerable response from both supporters and critics.
The intelligent design movement has conducted an organized campaign largely in the United States that promotes a pseudoscientific, neo-creationist religious agenda calling for broad social, academic and political changes centering on intelligent design.
Michael Lawrence Williams is an American educator and attorney who is the former Education Commissioner of the U.S. state of Texas, in which capacity he was leader of the Texas Education Agency. Williams was appointed to the position on August 27, 2012, by then Governor Rick Perry. On October 15, 2015, Williams announced that he would step down as Education Commissioner at the end of the year to return to the private sector.
Comer is Portuguese and Spanish for the verb to eat. It may also refer to:
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This timeline of intelligent design outlines the major events in the development of intelligent design as presented and promoted by the intelligent design movement.
Christina Castillo Comer is the former Director of Science in the curriculum division of the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Comer spent nine years as the Director of Science until she resigned on November 7, 2007. Comer's resignation has sparked controversy about agency politics and the debate to teach evolution in public schools versus creationism or intelligent design.
"Strengths and weaknesses of evolution" is a controversial phrase that has been proposed for public school science curricula. Those proposing the phrase, such as the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), Don McLeroy, purport that there are weaknesses in the theory of evolution and in the evidence that life has evolved that should be taught for a balanced treatment of the subject of evolution. The scientific community rejects that any substantive weaknesses exist in the scientific theory, or in the data that it explains, and views the examples that have been given in support of the phrasing as being without merit and long refuted.
In American schools, the Genesis creation narrative was generally taught as the origin of the universe and of life until Darwin's scientific theories became widely accepted. While there was some immediate backlash, organized opposition did not get underway until the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy broke out following World War I; several states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution while others debated them but did not pass them. The Scopes Trial was the result of a challenge to the law in Tennessee. Scopes lost his case, and further U.S. states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution.
Penny Schwinn is an American educator and former Commissioner of Education for the U.S. state of Tennessee. She was appointed by Governor Bill Lee on January 17, 2019, and was sworn in on February 1, 2019. She resigned in May 2023.
References
- ↑ "Leadership profiles". Archived from the original on 2011-07-13.
- ↑ Linked In profile
- ↑ Bud Kennedy. "On intelligent design, a lesson in Political Science 101". Fort Worth Star-Telegram . Retrieved December 13, 2007.[ dead link ]
- ↑ U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE NETWORK DIRECTORY (2006-2007), page 10 [ permanent dead link ]
- ↑ "State of the University Address, August 21, 2006" (PDF). Southwestern University. August 21, 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 6, 2006.
- ↑ Secondary School Completion and Dropouts in Texas Public Schools 2005-06 Archived November 20, 2007, at the Wayback Machine August 2007, page 4
- ↑ TEA Director of Science Forced to Resign Archived 2007-12-02 at the Wayback Machine Steven Schafersman president of the Texas Citizens for Science, November 29, 2007
- ↑ "TDOE Welcomes Lizzette Reynolds as Tennessee Commissioner of Education". www.tn.gov. Retrieved 2023-07-17.
- ↑ "News article". The Statesman . Archived from the original on December 1, 2007. Retrieved December 8, 2007.
- ↑ "Texas official resigns, cites creationism conflict". USA Today . November 30, 2007. Retrieved December 8, 2007.