hmmmm..... Its been removed.
Hmmm. Here's the content (including the dead link from NCSE - paragraph tightening mine since I didn't take the link).
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TEA personnel issues prompt dicey evolution politics
by William Lutz
Lone Star Report
East Texas Review [Longview, TX]
Friday, December 14, 2007
http://www.easttexasreview.com/story.htm?StoryID=5066
Generally, reporters and political commentators have better things to do than to delve into the minor personnel matters of state agencies.
Such matters are generally technical, and the agency often can’t tell its side of the story.
But when the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) science director leaves under duress, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was a forwarded email promoting a program from a university professor who opposes the teaching of intelligent design in schools, well, suddenly The New York Times becomes interested.
The issue is particularly noteworthy because the state will soon begin rewriting its science standards.
The departure of Christine Castillo Comer from the Texas Education Agency could be a political issue for the next 18 months or so.
There’s more to this firing/resignation than just a forwarded email. Comer did resign, but, according to TEA documents, Susan Barnes, TEA associate commissioner for standards and programs, had already given permission to fire Comer if she did not resign.
Furthermore, Texas newspapers have spent plenty of ink writing about the negative reaction of Lizzette Reynolds, Barnes’s boss, toward the forwarded email. Reynolds, deputy commissioner for statewide policy and programs, and a former official in the George W. Bush education department, e-mailed other agency staff members expressing concern about the Comer e-mail and the possibility that people could see it as an expression of the agency’s views. Reynolds expressly called for personnel action against Comer.
Most newspapers are portraying the firing as merely a matter of one forwarded e-mail announcing a speaking engagement. This is the spin coming from the pro-evolution Texas Freedom Network and Texas Citizens for Science.
Personnel documents obtained from the Texas Education Agency pursuant to the Texas Open Records Act tell a different story. On Feb. 23, 2007, Comer received a counseling letter (governmentspeak for reprimand) from her immediate supervisor, Monica Martinez. "Over the past several months," Martinez wrote, "I have developed serious
concerns regarding your job performance with respect to your involvement with work outside the agency and failure to follow supervisory directives." The letter then spelled out a series of restrictions on Comer’s conduct, including a requirement for obtaining prior approval before giving science-related presentations and a prohibition on outside communications that "might compromise the transparency and/or integrity of the upcoming TEKS [Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills – the curriculum] development and revision
process."
Comer is accused of violating the restriction in that letter. State agencies do not fire mid-level managers willy-nilly. Personnel documents show that, like most personnel actions, this is the result of a series of incidents that have developed over time.
Like it or not, Robert Scott will have to explain this. Most personnel matters are private. But most personnel matters don’t appear in USA Today.
The publicity surrounding this action, and the accusation that the agency is taking sides on the evolution issue, will undoubtedly be the subject of questions in 2009, when Commissioner of Education Robert Scott has to appear before the Senate for confirmation hearings.
Of course, Scott is no novice at being in the line of fire over agency operations. Soon after his predecessor left, the agency’s inspector general issued a report critical of the Texas Education Agency’s contracting. (The State Auditor reviewed the report and found insufficient evidence of criminal misconduct.)
Scott should start working on his explanation to senators now.
The major newspapers have no tolerance for dissent on the evolution issue. Fealty to evolution may trump racial sensitivity as the ultimate unquestionable in the eyes of most of the major newspaper editorial boards. To the national media, anyone who points out concerns about evolution or tries to critique it is portrayed as a cross between a Luddite, a member of the Flat Earth Society, and Pope Urban VIII, who made Galileo recant his view that the Sun is the center of the Solar System.
Even people who make well-thought-out critiques of Darwin are accused of trying to cram their religious views down others’ throats.
Social and religious conservatives need to keep this in mind when deciding how to address the issue of evolution and biology.
Evolution is a politically dicey issue, a fact that many religious conservatives don’t recognize. Bluntly, any attempt to remove evolution from the curriculum or put any discussion of intelligent design in scares the living daylights out of many moderate or suburban Republicans – especially those with scientific backgrounds. Even discussing the pros and cons of evolution can cause political problems. Many Americans view it either as a government imposition of religion or political tampering with science or both.
Socially conservative members of the State Board of Education (SBOE) have made lots of progress in the last few years. They recently removed a fuzzy math book from the approved textbook list. Their ideas to make the English curriculum more grade-level-specific, measurable, and based on phonics in the early grades are gaining traction. They now have a working majority on the board on many issues.
But an evolution controversy places all that at risk. In Kansas, board control has alternated between conservatives and self-styled moderates. Evolution sometimes gets board members beat in Republican primaries.
In Plano, an evolution controversy in the mid-1990s caused
conservative local school board members to get beat. The current
school board is still supporting fuzzy math in Plano schools and
raising taxes.
During the debate over the TEKS in 1995, SBOE conservatives were accused of trying to force religion into the classroom -- even though their objections to the TEKS had nothing to do with religion -- precisely because their opponents knew how politically potent a card this is.
The real question is not what the state board members do, it’s how they do it. Concern about evolution and how it is taught is a deeply and sincerely held view by many board members and their constituents.
But -- if they want to avoid serious political repercussions -- they have to think about how to present this issue. In particular, they have to address concerns about forcing religious views on students or political tampering with science.
For better or for worse, the press has transformed a routine personnel matter into a national debate on the role of evolution in the classroom. True. Both the board members and officials with the Texas Education Agency emphatically state the board had nothing to do with this. But for better or for worse, it has become the first salvo in a statewide discussion over how to teach biology in public schools.
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I've read less editorially laden "news stories" on blogs for Chrissakes.
