BOE approves new stan­dards that crit­i­cize evo­lu­tion, Gov­er­nor Sebe­lius responds:

This is just the lat­est in a series of trou­bling deci­sions by the Board of Edu­ca­tion. If we’re going to con­tin­ue to bring high-tech jobs to Kansas and move our state for­ward, we need to strength­en sci­ence stan­dards, not weak­en them. Stronger pub­lic schools ought to be the mis­sion of the Board of Edu­ca­tion, and it’s time they got down to the real busi­ness of strength­en­ing Kansas schools.

Giv­en that the Board does­n’t have per­mis­sion to use the copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al from the NAS and Nation­al Sci­ence Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, these stan­dards will still have to be re-writ­ten, mak­ing the whole thing irrelevant.

“You have changed the very def­i­n­i­tion of sci­ence so that it can include super­nat­ur­al expla­na­tions, mix­ing sci­ence and the­ol­o­gy,” said act­ing KCFS pres­i­dent and sci­ence stan­dards com­mit­tee mem­ber Jack Krebs.

And that’s why the whole thing will nev­er sur­vive. The cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence of the Board will result in a shift in pow­er large enough to undo what hap­pened today.