Thoughts in a Haystack

The National Center for Science Education has identified the amendments to the Texas science standards inserted at the last meeting of the State Board of Education by the creationist members. The list is below and if you go the NCSE site you can get a full explanation of why they suck, though many of the reasons will be obvious. The NCSE is also asking Texas scientists to contact their board member and oppose inclusion of these amendments in the final standards and gives information about how to go about it.

McLeroy's Amendment to Biology Section 7

What the amendment does:

inserts the phrase "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record" between existing standards 7A and 7B, relabeling 7B-7E to 7C-7F.

Cargill's Amendments to Earth and Space Science:

(4) Earth and Space Science

What the amendment does:

inserts the words "differing theories" into the sentence "…observations reveal differing theories about the structure, scale, composition, origin, and history of the universe."

(5) Earth and Space Science

What the amendment does:

changes the sentence "The student knows that Earth's place in the solar system is explained by the solar nebular accretionary disk model" to "The student understands that Earth's place in the solar system is explained by the solar nebular accretionary disk model."

(5)(B) Earth and Space Science

What the amendment does:

inserts "are thought to allow" into the sentence "…kinetic heat of impact accretion, gravitational compression, and radioactive decay, which are thought to allow protoplanet differentiation…"

(6)(D) Earth and Space Science

What the amendment does:

inserts "the evidence that the" into the phrase "evaluate the evidence that the Earth's cooling led to tectonic activity"

Leo's Amendments to Biology

Terri Leo offered several amendments to High School Biology TEKS in (7)(A), (7)(B), (7)(C), (7)(D), and (7)(E). These were proposed before McLeroy's amendment above, and reflect earlier labeling of standards. 7B-7E here are 7C-7F in the TEKS under consideration now.

What the amendments do:

All of these amendments involved inserting the phrase "analyze and evaluate" in place of verbs such as "identify," "recognize," and "describe".

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Via Greg Laden
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