Kansas State Board of Education - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kansas State Department Board of Education (KSDE) is Kansas

Kansas

Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

's Board of Education

Board of education

A board of education or a school board or school committee is the title of the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or higher administrative level....

, headquartered in Topeka

Topeka, Kansas

Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...

. The board of education that controls the department is a constitutional body established in Article 6 of the Kansas Constitution. The ten members of the Board of Education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

are each elected to four-year terms. The Board helps determine educational policy

Policy

A policy is typically described as a principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome. The term is not normally used to denote what is actually done, this is normally referred to as either procedure or protocol...

for the state's primary

Primary education

A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...

and secondary

Secondary education

Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...

schools.

The Kansas State Board of Education was created to replace the position of Kansas State Superintendent of Public Instruction effective January 14, 1969, pursuant to an amendment to the Kansas Constitution adopted November 8, 1966.

Intelligent design controversy

There has been a controversy

Controversy

Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of opinion. The word was coined from the Latin controversia, as a composite of controversus – "turned in an opposite direction," from contra – "against" – and vertere – to turn, or versus , hence, "to turn...

regarding the status of creationism and evolution in the Kansas public education system, which is also the subject of a great deal of debate in the legal, political, and religious arenas.

In 1999, the Board ruled that instruction about evolution, the age of the earth

Age of the Earth

The age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years This age is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples...

, and the origin of the universe was permitted, but not mandatory, and that those topics would not appear on state standardized tests. The board relied heavily on Creation Science Association of Mid America material in constructing science standards that minimized the tuition of evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

. However, the Board reversed this decision February 14, 2001, ruling that instruction of all those topics was mandatory and that they would appear on standardized tests.

Then on August 9, 2005, the Board approved a draft of science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

curriculum

Curriculum

See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...

standards

Learning standards

Learning standards is a term used to describe standards applied to education content, particularly in the US K-12 education system. Part of the standards-based education reform movement, learning standards are used to create rubrics for assessment in many schools; standardized tests are often used...

that mandated equal time for the theories of "evolution" and "intelligent design

Intelligent design

Intelligent design is the proposition 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." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...

". But February 13, 2007, the Board voted 6 to 4 to reject the amended science standards enacted in 2005. The definition of science was once again limited to "the search for natural explanations for what is observed in the universe", or what is known as "methodological naturalism".

External links

KSDE

KSDE - Official Website
History of Education in Kansas, KSDE
Kansas School District Boundary Map, KSDE

Controversy

Kansas education board downplays evolution State school board OKs standards casting doubt on Darwin.
Kansas Rewrites Science Standards Again
Letters to the Kansas State Board of Education regarding evolution and science curriculum standards, June 7, 2005
Kansas board of education scraps standards questioning evolution

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Intelligent design controversy

Further reading

External links