In the beginning, there was darkness . . .

In March, the Ohio State Board of Education held a hearing to listen to arguments about evolution. Rather than refuting the classic creationist doctrine that the earth was created in six days, scientists testifying before the board had to answer a more subtle version of creationism called “Intelligent Design” by its proponents. Intelligent Design advocates argue that living organisms are so complex that they could not have arisen through Darwinian evolution — instead, the complexity hints at an “intelligent designer” driving the process.

Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor at Case Western Reserve University, prefers to call Intelligent Design what it is: “an attack on science.” Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek and other popular books, adds that “we do a miserable job of conveying to people what science is already, and this is just going to make it worse.”

Unfortunately, the situation in Ohio is not an aberration. In 1999, for example, the Kansas school board decided to discourage the teaching of evolution. Although this highly publicized decision was subsequently reversed, it is part of a nationwide pattern. Alabama’s Board of Education now inserts a disclaimer undermining evolution in its biology textbooks, and the Illinois school board has gradually purged the word “evolution” from its curriculum, replacing it with “change over time.” In Louisiana, one recent survey showed that 29% of the state’s biology teachers support teaching creationism.

State school boards are loathe to offend a politically powerful group, and the overall state of science education in the US leaves average citizens ill-equipped to take a stand on the issue. The result is that creationism, a peculiar doctrine supported by a minority of citizens, has permeated K-12 biology education nationwide.

Most scientists have taken a dangerously laissez-faire attitude about the issue, according to Krauss. “The scientific community has always just assumed that the correct idea will win out because that’s the way it works in science,” but “that approach doesn’t work very well when there are people with a vested interest in the opposite happening.”

Multiple choices.

Nobody knows whether US schools will have more success teaching science in the future, but they will definitely have more tests. As a result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, every state must implement an array of tests for students at various levels, as well as for teachers. The exams for different subjects are to be phased in over the next few years; student science tests will start in 2007.

Since there is no legally mandated national science curriculum, each state’s test will be geared to its own standards and lesson plans — or, as many critics argue, vice-versa.

There is also concern that testing could amplify current inequities in the nation’s educational system. “States that have more money can do more innovative testing [for] deeper concepts, but states that don’t are going to have to use . . . multiple choice,” says David Vannier, Professional Development Coordinator in the NIH’s Office of Science Education. Differences are even arising at the local level: some wealthy districts are preparing for the science test already, while poorer districts in the same state are still not ready for upcoming reading tests.

Some of the criticism of testing, however, may be misplaced. “People like to blame the test developers, who are the same people who make the textbooks, but if people wanted innovative, problem-solving type tests, they would make them,” says Vannier. The challenge, it seems, will be convincing school boards to ask.

Throwing the book at them.

Science education in the US may be plagued with problems, but at least American students have been given the most comprehensive, lavishly illustrated textbooks in the world.

That is, in fact, one of the problems.

International comparisons show that, while US science textbooks cover more subjects than any of their foreign counterparts, they do so in less depth, and clear explanations are often sacrificed to make room for facts and vocabulary lists — knowledge that is easy to test. Traditionally, science textbook content has been dictated partly by the state curricula of Texas and California, the two biggest markets for school books, and partly by the need to cover the material on as many state tests as possible. The product of these diverse market forces is usually a chimera that looks as if it were created by a committee. In most cases, it was.

In an effort to bring a more positive force to the market, the AAAS’s Project 2061 has analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the current crop of science textbooks for different grade levels and publicized its results. The Project has also convened conferences for textbook publishers, the research community, and policymakers to address the problem. “We’ve heard from a number of the commercial groups who say that they’re going to . . . attempt to make their books better aligned with the curriculum,” says Jo Ellen Roseman, Acting Director of Project 2061.

The publishers are probably sincere, but change will nonetheless be slow. Since writing and publishing a textbook is a multi-year process, and most states only buy new books every few years, reformers expect the changes to take at least a decade to reach students.