Charter Schools and Religious Entanglement

Although certainly not a new topic (witness last year's Loch Ness Monster reports), the problem of the funding of religious charter schools by state money is becoming a more visible problem.  John Turley tackles this controversy.  The article is as much as anything just a run-down of different cases that have spawned across the country but it is interesting for showing that the charter school/fundamentalist ties are strong in many different areas across the country.  Among them, he writes:

In November 2010, Jessica Meyers wrote a newspaper article about Advantage Academy in Duncanville, Texas. She said the students at this school “follow biblical principles, talk openly about faith and receive guidance from a gregarious former pastor who still preaches when he speaks.” She said Advantage Academy is typical of the “latest breed of charter schools”—those “born from faith-based principles and taxpayer funds.” She added, “Advantage markets its teaching of creationism and intelligent design. It offers a Bible class as an elective and encourages personal growth through hard work and ‘faith in God and country.’”

The academy’s founder Allen Beck is a former pastor for Assemblies of God who “hopes to instill morals and ethics in students as they learn to count and read.” Beck was quoted as saying, “America is in a battle between secularity and biblical thinking. I want to fuse the two together in a legal way.”

The more open these charter schools get in proclaiming their ID/creationism, the more scrutiny they will get to the point where the whole program will be examined and investigated. Given that the organized Texas educational system does not have a good track record for the teaching of "hard science," this will be a battleground state.

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. 

Baton Rouge Advocate on Louisiana and the Loch Ness Monster

In an editorial dated August 19, the editors of the Baton Rouge Advocate address the controversy surrounding the Louisiana voucher program and the Loch Ness Monster. They write:

The state has no intention, apparently, of launching any serious investigation of the Loch Ness monster in school curriculums. Instead, it will pay and pay, for years, and — if students do poorly on science tests at some future date — the state Department of Education might raise the question of why mythology is part of a school’s curriculum.

“In the event that there is basic academic incompetence, the state (education) department can intervene,” White says. “The most effective way of testing all of this is to literally see what do the students know and what do they achieve, and we’re doing that through the state test.”

A more-effective way would be for the department to open its eyes to this kind of educational malpractice before children’s futures are endangered.

The problem, of course, is by the time you get academic incompetence, how do you go about re-educationg these kids? By then the damage is done. Then what you have is kids that go to college (if they go to a mainstream college) who get their faith rocked by the scientific “real world.”

Then supposing you do find academic incompetence because of the curricula. How do you go about getting rid of the bad curricula without lawsuits, court cases, injunctions, and other delay tactics?

“Darwin just made it up.” Great googlymoogly!

Hat Tip to Glenn Branch.

Louisiana Pays Attention

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a report that the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has passed stricter rules for schools that are accepting government vouchers. Writes Andrew Vanacore:

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved a new set of academic standards Tuesday for private schools participating in Louisiana's expanded voucher program. By a vote of 9-2, the 11-member panel, known as BESE, adopted a plan proposed by state Superintendent John White that will require private schools to hit roughly the same academic bar that public schools do in order to continue accepting more students through the program.

The standards exclude those schools with less than forty students, however, which has drawn criticism. It is hard not to see this as a result of widespread coverage of Louisiana school children looking for the Loch Ness Monster and being taught creationism.

Test scores aside, the program is also drawing concerns that state tax dollars could end up going to schools that reject evolution in favor of creationism. Zack Kopplin, a college student who gained notoriety in 2010 when he attacked a state law that critics saw as a backdoor endorsement of creationist ideas, turned up at the BESE meeting Tuesday with a list of schools in the voucher program that appear to promote a biblical interpretation of human origins.

Kopplin cited a line from the student handbook at Faith Academy, in Gonzalez, requiring students to "defend creationism through evidence presented by the Bible versus traditional scientific theory."

Somebody saw the handwriting on the wall and realized that if the voucher program was going to survive and not suffer a constitutional challenge, changes had to be made to make sure that creationism wasn't being taught and they weren't using curricula that trash evolution.

White's plan gives BESE responsibility for ensuring private schools "maintain a curriculum of quality at least equal to that prescribed for similar public schools," with the power to hand down penalties "including ineligibility to participate or ineligibility to accept new students."

But during a conference call Tuesday, White suggested that he would rely instead on the science portion of the state's LEAP exams to weed out schools that aren't teaching biology up to acceptable standards. "The test measures evolution," he said.

As it should.

“Many miles away Something crawls to the surface Of a dark Scottish loch” -Sting

This is almost painful to read. The Scotland Herald has a story on the arrival of school children from the great state of Louisiana who are being taught that the actual existence of the Loch Ness Monster is proof that evolution has never happened. Rachel Loxton reports:

Thousands of children in the southern state will receive publicly-funded vouchers for the next school year to attend private schools where Scotland's most famous mythological beast will be taught as a real living creature.

These private schools follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.

and a bit later:

One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: "Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."

The bit about the private schools getting vouchers is true. That is here. Salon.com did a piece on the ACE textbooks. They fill in the remainder of the above quote:

“Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.”

I have written on the apologia textbooks before but these books seem to be every bit as bad. It is nothing short of astounding that the authors of the ACE textbooks, in their zeal to disprove evolution, have settled upon an animal for which No Credible Evidence Exists. It is not just bad science, it is cryptozoology of the worst sort. What is next? Evolution can't be true because of if it were, how would it produce the regular octopus and the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus? Humans could not have evolved from lower ape forms because Bigfoot still roams the earth?

The second quote is just standard young earth creationist nonsense, continually perpetrated by Answers in Genesis and the like and has been rebutted so many times that the arguments can now reasonably be classified as lies.

Karl Giberson once said:

“Ken Ham and his Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY are becoming less relevant, as they speak for - and to - an increasingly smaller band of hyper-conservative biblical literalists. Ham's followers, ironically, are what (we've been warned about): a cult, with their own separate science.”

I have resisted calling young earth creationism a cult. Stories like this one make it increasingly difficult to do so.