Yecke controversy evolves

If Florida K-12 Chancellor Cheri Yecke thought hiring an Internet search-and-destroy firm was going to deflate the controversy over her views on the teaching of intelligent design, she thought wrong. A few bloggers have weighed in since the June 26 St. Petersburg Times story, including Wesley Elsberry, the scientist/blogger who's central to the most recent flaring. Elsberry recently transcribed a Yecke TV interview (unearthed by another blogger) and posted it on his blog, The Austringer. He says the interview proves a tiny Minnesota newspaper was right when it summed up Yecke's views, and that Yecke is trying to scrub the truth. "As far as I'm concerned," he told The Gradebook, "this matter is now resolved."

The Gradebook isn't sure whether this next bit adds to the debate or not, but just in case, here goes: The October 2003 statement from the Princeton Union Eagle that Yecke disputes says Yecke explained that "schools could include the concept of 'intelligent design' in teaching how the world came to be." This is how The Times summed up Yecke's response: "This week she said the Union Eagle statement is inaccurate and worth setting straight because she believes such decisions should be left up to district officials." But Yecke also had this comment about the Union Eagle , which a Times editor trimmed because of space considerations: "The newspaper's summation wrongly suggested a ‘directive' on her part, she said. ‘You don't want to appear to be leading the district one way or the other,' " she said. " ‘I believe in local flexibility.' "

In all honesty, The Gradebook is too swamped with an exploding FCAT and an imploding FAMU to sit still long enough to give Yecke, evolution and intelligent design the consideration they all deserve. So here's hoping a cyber-scrum can sort it out: Does the excised Times passage make a difference? Does the TV clip make a difference? Is Yecke splitting hairs? Have bloggers gone wild? Will any of this matter if Yecke applies to be Florida's next education commissioner?

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

Comments

[Gayle]

Yecke is yucky.

Please read all about her, and her ideas of "intelligent design." Is this where we want Florida to move towards?

[tj]

Yecke was part of the "Jeb Bush contingency"...aka Winn/Handy/et.al. We need new blood in Tallahassee with our new people's governor....I say find someone else who has no prior affiliation with Bush.

[Goader]

Click on "Goader" to see what I think.

[Wesley R. Elsberry]

Here are some resources that I will list in chronological order.

The Minneapolis/St. Paul Pioneer Press, 2003/08/04, had this statement that I quoted, but Yecke did not object to:

[Quote]

Yecke said she saw the Santorum amendment as "explanatory language" intended to offer local districts flexibility.

"A local school board may say you can discuss intelligent design," she said. "It's up to local school boards and local communities to have this discussion."

[End quote]

TPT's "Almanac" program on September 12, 2003 featured the hosts, Cheri Pierson Yecke, and Minnesota State Rep. Jim Davnie:

[Quote]

Host: How much internal debate was there in the department over creationism versus evolution?

CPY: Well, creationism is off the table completely because of a 1987 supreme court ruling. The issue really is intelligent design and evolution and the there was language that was put in the conference committee report that accompanied the no child left behind act that said you know students should be exposed to all sides of a controversial issue. And we brought that up to the committee members because we didn't want to see this just evolve into a controversy. We spent a lot of time on the math committee just just talking about the use of calculators, and time is precious, so we wanted to make sure that we stopped any kind of controversy at the beginning. And it is well understood now that this is a decision that would be made by local school boards and not the state.

JD: What the commissioner is failing to mention [undecipherable] is that the Santorum amendment that she refers to never passed into law. And Minnesota has to follow federal law, not, uh, amendments that were offered in conference committees at the federal level.

CPY: But I would beg to differ with you, representative Davnie, because the conference committee report when I worked at the department of education, that and the congressional record is what we used to inform our policy-making. That was the intent of congress, and it came forward in a document that.s about this thick I would have brought it tonight if I knew we were going to discuss it, and it's there as a way to give guidance to the states so that we can tell local school districts what what is and is not permissible and what they can do.

JD: The risk we run here is weakening Minnesota science curriculum.

[End quote]

See the video at:

http://video1.tpt.org:8080/ramgen/almanac/show/1852.rm?start=8:23

There is the unknown quantity, the "advance publicity" for the commissioner's hearing held on 2003/09/30. There is no data on that except the report that follows.

Finally, here is the disputed quote from the Princeton Union-Eagle, 2003/10/09:

[Quote]

Yecke had explained in her advance publicity for the hearings that schools could include the concept of "intelligent design" in teaching how the world came to be.

[End quote]

The Santorum language referred to is not simply explanatory language as most of the contents of the "No Child Left Behind" act's conference report may be considered. That language was part of the version of the act sent by the Senate to the conference committee. The conference committee specifically *rejected* that language. Its inclusion in the conference report does not confer upon it the status that Yecke asserts. As I stated to the Fourth World Skeptics Conference in 2002, antievolutionist obfuscation over the status of the Santorum language continues.

I have more at http://austringer.net/wp/?p=626

For those wishing to see why "intelligent design" can be considered a textbook case of a legal sham (literally, as the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case showed) but not a suitable topic for science classrooms, see the recent book, "Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" from W.W. Norton and "Why Intelligent Design Fails" from Rutgers University Press. I have contributed chapters to both those books.