New Web Site: Say No To Creationist Vouchers

You knew that once the Loch Ness Monster story hit the airwaves, this was not far behind.  A new site has popped up, Say No To Creationist Vouchers, which lists the school districts across the country that are participating in school voucher programs and teaching young earth creationism.  The list is quite something.  Having said that, it is not clear that all of the schools fall afoul of bad science.  Some are obvious:

Lakewood Christian School, in Auburn, says in its mission, “creation: we believe the Genesis account of a literal six-day creation; we believe man was created directly in God’s image and after His own likeness, and not by evolution (man did not evolve from other life forms).”

Others, not so:

Denver Christian Schools (3 schools, 2 in Denver, 1 in Highlands Ranch), say in their statement of faith that they teach “God reveals himself in all aspects of creation; therefore, all aspects of God’s creation are worthy of study. At Denver Christian, students learn to see this magnificent creation through the “lens” of Scripture.

I tend to view creation through the lens of scripture as well. It is not clear that these guys teach creationism. One can view the creation through the lens of scripture and still teach evolution. BioLogos does that.  I think these guys need to ferret out the ones that are actually teaching creationism (quite a lot of them do) from the ones that simply focus on teaching things from a biblical perspective.  That I have no trouble with.

What does worry me is that, if this really gets a head of steam going, it may spell doom for the voucher programs as a whole, which would be a shame because unless the public schools have competition, they will not improve.  The private schools are over a barrel because they want to provide kids good education but the public schools have the wealth (such as it is) of the U.S. government behind them and aren't, so to speak, on a level playing field.  By funneling money to the private schools in the form of vouchers, it creates the incentive for the public schools to improve.  Young earth creationism could kill that.