Evolution bills buried

Evolution bills buried
Dayton News-Journal Online - 5/6/2008 - original
In the whirlwind of Friday's final day of the legislative session, one high-profile proposal went, well, extinct.

The House and Senate could not agree on a bill to make sure public-school science teachers could raise questions about evolution.

Social and religious conservatives started pushing for such a bill after the state Board of Education approved science standards this year that included teaching evolution.

The Senate passed the Evolution Academic Freedom Act that would have given teachers the "right and freedom to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views'' about evolution.

House members, meanwhile, approved a proposal that called for teachers to provide a "thorough presentation and scientific critical analysis'' of evolution.

But in the end, the two chambers could not agree on the wording. That gave a victory to opponents, who argued the bills were aimed at injecting creationism or other religious views into science classes.