The Americans United for Separation of Church and State organization on Monday asked the Arkansas Department of Education to take steps to stop what it calls the “anti-evolution and pro-creationism teachings”at two of the state’s open-enrollment charter high schools run by a Texas company.
“We have reviewed the biology curriculum used in charter schools operated in Arkansas by Responsive Education Solutions” at Premier High School of Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy in Bentonville, organization staff attorney Ian Smith wrote to Mary Perry, charter schools coordinator for the Education Department.
“The curricular materials attempt to aggressively undermine the theory of evolution and promote creationism,” Smith continued. “Promoting creationism in the public schools is forbidden by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” he said.
Smith asked the state agency to either direct Responsive Education Solutions to stop using the materials or to revoke charters for the schools.
Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the Education Department, said late Monday afternoon that agency officials had received the letter that day and “are reviewing it.”
A telephone message left for Grif Griffin, chief communications officer for Responsive Education Solutions, late Monday afternoon was not returned.
Responsive Education Solutions, based in Lewisville, Texas, operates dozens of charter schools in Texas. In the 2013-14 school year, the company opened the two high schools in Arkansas as well as Quest Middle School in Pine Bluff. The nonprofit company recently received Arkansas Board of Education approval to open another Quest School in 2014-15 on Rahling Road in west Little Rock. That school will initially serve middle school pupils and expand into the high school grades.
The letter from Americans United for Separation of Church and State criticizes the biology curriculum for the Arkansas high schools, saying it states that evolution “is an unproved theory” that “has reached the level of dogma” and that there are “holes” in the theory.
The letter includes the page numbers in the biology curriculum on which the organization found criticisms of evolution, as well as the page numbers for the portions of the instructional materials that mention “intelligent design or creationism,” referring to them as “other theories on the origins of life.”
“Indeed, the curriculum presents supernatural intervention as the baseline view of the origin of life and the universe,” Smith said in the letter to the Education Department.
Smith said the instructional materials state that “most people believed that God created everything” and evolution is a “new idea” that “gave non-religious scientists a way to explain the diversity of life on the planet without resorting to creationism.”
Smith cited in the letter several court rulings that discounted the teaching of creationism or balancing evolution and creationism teachings, including a 1982 federal court case in Arkansas that struck down a state law requiring public schools to give equal time to teaching creationism.
“Responsive Education Solutions’ biology curriculum cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny,” Smith said and asked the Education Department to respond within 30 days.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/11/2014