Six expert reviewers invited to testify Jan. 21 on Texas science standards

The Discovery Institutie reports that the six experts who were appointed by the Texas State Board of Education to write expert reviews of the proposed Texas science standards have now been invited to testify at the Jan. 21 oral hearing on the standards-drafting committees' final proposal for the standards. IMO this invitation is a strong indication that the SBOE wants to revise the committees' final draft. The current situation is described here.

The Texas Freedom Network reported that the board plans to restrict the general public's oral comment period to four hours. IMO that is a bad idea -- it may unfairly prevent some people form testifying and it will discourage people from coming to the hearing to testify.

Links to live broadcasts of the hearings are posted here and links to audio archives of the hearings are posted here. If you have a dial-up connection and want to listen to the Jan. 21 hearing, you should listen to the live broadcast because I found that with my slow dial-up connection I could not listen continuously to the archived audio files.

"Stupid Steven" Schafersman calls this expert oral testimony "The Great Texas Kangaroo Smackdown." As usual, Schafersman is making wild unsupported accusations --
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The Great Texas Kangaroo Smackdown was designed by the seven radical, religious-right Creationists on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE).

Schafersman has provided no evidence that all seven of the board's supporters of the "strengths and weaknesses" language are "radical, religious-right Creationists" or that they "designed" the "Great Texas Kangaroo Smackdown."

The Great Texas Kangaroo Smackdown is the love child of the seventh radical right SBOE member and chairman, Don McLeroy, illicitly conceived by mental coupling with "his friends" in the Discovery Institute. Only McLeroy has the power to invite the six experts to attend a SBOE hearing to give testimony and answer questions from the other State Board members, but this idea was not his alone. He was coached by his Discovery friends to set up this misleading debate, since it is designed to fit perfectly with the Discovery Instiltute marketing campaign to spread fear and doubt about evolution, thus promoting the currently-popular alternative that the DI markets, Intelligent Design Creationism.

Schafersman provided no evidence to support his allegations in the preceding paragraph.

More information is in the articles in the two "Texas Controversy" post-label groups in the sidebar of the homepage.
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