The Texas Observer

Creationism studies in Texas went back to square one Thursday. The nine-member Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board backed Commissioner Raymund Paredes’ recommendation to deny the Institute for Creation Research’s bid to teach creationism as science.

After Wednesday’s lengthy hearing and full day of testimony, board members voted that public testimony not be admitted today—proof, perhaps, that God is merciful.

The vote was quick and unanimous.  Joe Stafford, assistant commissioner for Academic Affairs and Research, read into the record a Texas Education Code statute about preventing public deception in the face of fraudulent or substandard college and university degrees. He also read from Texas Administrative Code rules 12a and 12d, which discuss the quality and content of curricula.

Dr. Henry Morris, CEO of the Institute for Creation Research, told the Observer that his school will appeal the decision within 45 days. Morris said the ICR may also take its case to the Texas Supreme Court.

A bid to teach creationism as science in Texas is facing extinction. Raymund Paredes, commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, today recommended that the Institute for Creation Research not be allowed to offer a Masters of Science degree in Science Education.

The ICR teaches that the earth was created in a week and that it is 6,000 years old.

Paredes made his recommendation before the Coordinating Board’s Academic Excellence and Research Committee. On Thursday the 9-member Coordinating Board will meet to take a final vote on the Commissioner’s recommendation.

Three participants spoke in favor of ICR’s application: a radio announcer with a science background, a military officer, and a tax attorney. Seven folks spoke against authorizing ICR to grant degrees. Among them were several science teachers and two representatives of science education organizations: the Science Teacher’s Association of Texas and the Texas Academy of Science.

Commissioner Paredes said in a press release that he based his recommendation on two considerations: ICR failed to demonstrate that the proposed degree program meets acceptable standards of science and science education, and the proposed degree is inconsistent with Coordinating Board rules that require the accurate labeling or designation of programs.

Dr. Henry Morris, president of the ICR, told the Observer he was not surprised by Paredes’ recommendation. Morris said there has been an “intensity of resistance from the academic community toward creationism in the last year in Texas.” He cited the dismissal of Texas Education Agency employee Chris Comer, the upcoming review of TEKS and critical thinking standards for Texas schools, and the pro-creationism movie “Expelled” as topics that had generated media attention and public debate in the last year.

Morris said if the Board votes to uphold the Commissioner’s recommendation, the Institute will appeal the decision in the next 45 days. If the appeal is denied, Morris said, the Institute may take its case to the Texas Supreme Court. “We were denied the right to operate in California and we went through a lengthy and onerous court case before we won,” he said. “It’s an option that we will consider in Texas if we are denied.”

Morris said the real issue at hand is “whether science can tolerate a different presumption about the beginning point of creation.”

The ICR attorney said it was a question of freedom of speech and the Constitution that the Institute should be granted the authority to teach science in Texas.

Steven Schafersman, who testified against ICR at the hearing, said he thought Commissioner Paredes had made a “decisive and strong decision based on sound reasoning.”

“The ICR attorney said it was about fair play and free speech, but I disagree,” Schafersman said. “They have the right to teach whatever they want, but not the right to have the state grant them the authority to teach pseudoscience.”

There’s always home schooling…

Looks like the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board won’t be considering the Institute for Creation Research’s application next week after all. A Board spokesperson says THECB Commissioner Raymund Paredes has continuing concerns about ICR’s request for accreditation to grant master’s degrees in science education.

For more backstory on the ICR’s request to grant degrees see this previous Observer blog post.

The spokesperson, De J. Lozada, says concerns were raised after THECB consulted with a wide variety of individuals, and include questions about how students might expect to gain exposure to scientific experimentation in an online-only environment. Paredes has also asked for documentation of current ICR research projects and either a revision of the ICR curriculum or, alternately, an explanation as to why the current curriculum departs from the norm for a master of science degree program in Texas.

Complying may prove a tall order, considering that ICR teaches the universe was created in six days by God, who also cooked up humankind from scratch in the form of Adam and Eve. In an e-mail sent to THECB, Dr. Eddy Miller, dean of ICR’s graduate school, wrote, “It has become obvious to us that in order to do justice to the concerns you raised, we would need more time than is available to us if our Application is to be considered at the January meeting of the THECB. Thus we would like for you to delay consideration of our Application until the April meeting.”

Lozada is quick to clarify that ICR’s request hasn’t been rejected, just delayed. God may have created the universe in little more than a standard work week (though the geologic record suggests otherwise), but then Rome was hardly built in a day. For the time being, at least, ICR’s version of academic heaven will just have to wait.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board asked a team of academics to keep an open mind about creationism, according to emails obtained by the Observer. In an October 8th email to four people recruited for a “site evaluation team” slated to visit the Institute for Creation Research in Dallas, Linda McDonough of the Coordinating Board, wrote:

As you all know, creationism is a controversial issue with strong feelings on both sides. I’m sorry to have to put this bluntly, but, would you, as an evaluator, be able to put aside any opinions you may have on the issue and give an unbiased report on the education side of the degree program and how it meets the standards set by the [Coordinating Board]? Please respond by email as soon as possible.

The ICR, which wants permission from the coordinating board to offer a master’s in science education, believes, contrary to a mountain of indisputable scientific evidence and God-given common sense, that a few thousand years ago the good Lord took six literal days to create the sun, moon, plants, people, dinosaurs and the apes we didn’t evolve from.

(For those now wondering if dinosaurs coexisted with humans - yes, ICR says, Noah had compact baby dinos on the Ark and after the Flood people hunted them into extinction. This explanation, IMO, is an improvement over the one I heard as a kid - that dinosaur fossils were planted by God to test our faith.)

Evolutionary thinking is not only a falsehood, according to ICR, but also causes abortion, promiscuity, drug abuse, and homosexuality, according to their irony-free Web site. The Institute requires all faculty members and students to accept a “limitation to academic freedom” - an oath to Biblical Literalism and a pledge of allegiance to Jesus. Let’s just say these folks aren’t just evolution skeptics, but hardcore creationists.

The evaluation team’s job was to issue a report on whether ICR deserves state accreditation based on 21 criteria. The report was submitted to the six-member Certification Advisory Council, which recommended on December 14 that the Coordinating Board approve ICR’s application. What happens next is largely up to Higher Ed Commissioner Raymund Paredes, who has wisely convened a panel of renowned scientists and educators to advise him. Sources say the panel held its first meeting Monday.

Two of the four email recipients - Rusty Waller, an assistant professor of educational leadership at Texas A&M-Commerce and Baptist preacher, and Gloria White, managing director of the Dana Center for Mathematics and Science Education at UT-Austin - ended up serving on the four-person team.

Waller readily agreed to McDonough’s request. “Certainly! I will only consider the standards,” he wrote in a reply email.

However, Cathy Loving, an associate professor of teaching, learning and culture at Texas A&M-College Station, agreed to serve on the team but took issue with McDonough’s request to remain neutral on pseudoscience. Loving fired back at McDonough:

Of course I have opinions—based on many years of research and writing. These opinions are very much on the “education side of the degree program and how it meets the standards of THECB.” I assume part of the education requirements of the Board’s standards involves the content of the courses. That is the controversial part—and the Institute will have to convince evaluators that the content is about science and about education—and that science and religion are taught with adequate distinctions. If they cannot do that, then there is no way I can support a program that calls itself “science education.”

“Creation science” is more than controversial. It has been ruled illegal to teach in public schools, according to decisions in Dover, Pennsylvania and then in the Supreme Court. But beyond that, even if private institutions are allowed to teach creationism—they must show the evaluators how their theory is presented in such a manner that “science education” meets a reasonable definition of science and not religious belief. Surely the Board has a reasonable definition of science.

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Leaders at the Texas Education Agency are so squeamish about evolution that they even considered avoiding the term on a new biology end-of-course exam to be offered to Texas high school students next year, agency emails obtained by the Observer show. “We are a bit concerned about the label and description used for objective 3 based on the recent news events concerning evolution,” wrote Julie Guthrie, TEA’s director of math and science assessments in a December 3rd email to Cyndi Louden, a student assessment staffer. “Please work with your team to see if you can come up with a different label and description for objective 3.”

At the time of the email, an educator advisory committee made up of science teachers had drafted five objectives for the biology exam to cover as part of an exam “blueprint.” Objective 3 was entitled “Genetics and Evolution” and consisted of 12 test items “sufficient to represent the relative importance of this objective.”Evidently TEA quickly decided against obscuring the evolution section. On December 12, Guthrie sent another email to Louden stating “no change should be made to the biology blueprint.” After reviewing the state standards for biology, Guthrie wrote that she had concluded, “the current language for the biology end-of-course assessment blueprint which includes evolution simply reflects the language in the curriculum adopted by the State Board of Education.”

Why did Guthrie consider deviating from the state’s official position on evolution in schools? After all, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) - the foundation for what Texas kids are taught and tested - plainly require that a student “knows the theory of Biological Evolution.” Her December 3rd email alludes to concerns surrounding “recent news events concerning evolution.” The recent evolution news in Texas has been centered on the termination of TEA’s director of science curriculum, Chris Comer, for promoting a talk by an anti-creationist author.

“I think that there had been such an outcry over this recent situation [over the Comer firing], it caused [Guthrie] to look at the language and wonder if it needed to be changed,” said Debbie Graves Ratcliffe, a TEA spokesperson, “but the more she thought about it and looked at the curriculum standard that the test covered she decided it wasn’t an issue, it didn’t need to be changed.”

Even using the term “evolution” in standardized test questions represents “progress,” said Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science and a long-time defender of evolution. “They avoided it for years,” Schafersman said. “They would use euphemisms - adaptation, change, change through time. They wouldn’t sue the ‘e’ word. And they never, never talked about human [evolution].”

That TEA backed off watering down the new biology test is good news and shows that common sense can still prevail at the deeply troubled and highly politicized agency. But still… the fact that a high-level TEA staffer thought “evolution” was such a toxic word that it needed to be scrubbed is sort of incredible.

Sci·ence /noun/ def: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.

We had to go to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary to make sure the definition for science had not changed in the past year, whew!

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) might want to check Webster’s too. Last Friday, the Board’s Certification Advisory Committee recommended that the Institute for Creation Research be given the power to grant Master’s degrees in science education.

Dominic Chavez, director of external relations for the coordinating board, says that the Board- appointed panel would give its positive recommendation to Commissioner Raymund Paredes and the Board for consideration at its next meeting January 24th.

“If it were granted it would be an interim step,” says Chavez of the authorization. “It’s a two year window where the the school can work in Texas, but they have to meet a number of criteria.”

Criteria? That might be tough when the Institute teaches that dinosaurs are only centuries old instead of millennia. Were our great great grandfathers dodging flesh-eating theropods in their Model Ts?

The folks that comprise the committee that made the recommendation include: Dr. Judith G. Loredo of Huston-Tillotson University, Dr. Helen Sullivan of Arlington Baptist College, Dr. Robert C. Cloud of Baylor University, Dr. Johanne Thomas of Texas A&M Prairie View, Dr. James P. Duran of UT Austin and Dr. Theodore J. Wardlow of the Austin Presbyterian Seminary.

They are appointed to two-year terms by the coordinating board to make recommendations on whether private institutions should be authorized to issue degrees in Texas.

The Creation Institute has spun off some interesting offspring, including, Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. At Ham’s museum, you can see a naked Adam, his naughty bits covered with a lily pad, reaching out to pet what looks like a mountain lion in the Garden of Eden. Smiling humans are also pictured alongside their dino friends. On the political front, Tim LaHaye, co-author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” novels and one of the founders of the institute, is stumping for Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign in Iowa.

Chris Comer, the Texas Education Agency’s science director, was forced out of her job last month for promoting a talk by a critic of intelligent design. Now, it appears that TEA employees can also jeopardize their jobs for not having a sufficiently sunny attitude about the current education scheme in Texas. In October, Lizzette Reynolds - the same person who called for Comer to be fired - found a “fire-able offense” in an email sent by Cami Jones, TEA’s director of early childhood development, according to copies of agency e-mails obtained by the Observer.

This revelation comes as Reynolds, a TEA deputy commissioner, tried today in the Statesman to distance herself from the Chris Comer firing.

The offending line came at the end of a long e-mail Jones sent to Pam Schiller, a freelance early childhood consultant and author, answering a question about upcoming revisions to the Pre-K curriculum. “I long for the good ole’ days when we were making good things happen for young children. Those were the days….take care….” [See the emails here, here, and here.]

Someone forwarded this email to Reynolds who, clearly outraged at this display of bitter nostalgia, emailed Jones’ supervisors later that day with a short message: “Unbelievable!! That last line is a fire-able offense. I want this documented. Let’s talk.”

Jones’ immediate supervisor, Monica Martinez, had already spoken with Jones about her email “a few minutes before [Martinez] saw the email from Lizzette.” Nonetheless, Martinez suggested that someone “may need to follow up and tell [Jones] that I am not the only one who has concerns,” ostensibly referring to Reynolds. The records trail peters out at this point.

However, TEA spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe confirmed that Jones is still working at the agency and evidently has not been fired. Ratcliffe wouldn’t comment further and suggested that the Observer file an open records request for Jones’ personnel file to learn more.

When contacted yesterday, Chris Comer, the former science director and Jones colleague, said her attorney had advised her not to speak to the media. However, in previous on-the-record comments to the Observer, Comer recalled that Reynolds had warned Jones not to write or say anything negative about TEA again.

Pam Schiller, who has known Jones for over 20 years, said Jones is “very much admired and loved by the early childhood community.” As far as the offending line in the email, Schiller believes Jones was specifically referring to a program the two worked on in the late 80s and early 90s called transitional first grade, a sort of extra year between kindergarten and first grade for struggling kids.

“I read nothing into that [line],” Schiller said. “That would be something I would say too. This is not the easiest time in life for children. They are under incredible pressure and so are the teachers.” Schiller and Jones are both at odds philosophically with the No Child Left Behind, high stakes testing regime that is increasingly imposed even on young children.

Schiller said Jones has butted heads with the No Child Left Behind partisans who run the show at TEA. “I think Cami has a difficult time there,” Schiller said. “She is kind of Don Quixote. She fights for the rights of children in a sturdy way. She is firm in her philosophical foundation of what she thinks is appropriate for small children … I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t looking for a way to make her quiet.”

In the interview with the Statesman published today, Reynolds baldly asserted that she “doesn’t think there is a muzzle on anyone [at TEA]. Everyone can express their opinions — goodness knows I have many — but we are a state agency and must respect the beliefs of Catholics, atheists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone.”