Have to tell you, I listened most of the day to the public testimony yesterday about whether to respect the science committee's recommendations to get rid of the S&W language or to go with the faux creationists and keep it in. I though the creationists were going to win it, especially when listening to Don McLeroy and our rep, Gail Lowe. But. No.

A last-ditch effort by social conservatives to require that Texas teachers cover the "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution in science classes was rejected by the State Board of Education Thursday in a split vote.

Board members deadlocked 7-7 on a motion to restore a long-time curriculum rule that "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories – notably Charles Darwin's theory of evolution – be taught in science classes and covered in textbooks for those subjects.

Voting for the requirement were the seven Republican board members aligned with social conservative groups. Against the proposal were three other Republicans and four Democrats.

The tie vote upheld a tentative decision by the board in January to delete the strengths-and-weaknesses rule in the new curriculum standards for science classes that will be in force for the next decade.

Yes! Now, the article says another vote will be taken tomorrow but it's not only unlikely to change, antoher board member who was absent is expected to vote.. AGAINST the S&W language.

TAKE THAT, Discovery Institute!

P.S. More from NCSE.

Writing in the Guardian (March 26, 2009), Jerry Coyne echoed the sentiment: "What happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas. That state is a sizeable consumer of public school textbooks, and it's likely that if it waters down its science standards, textbook publishers all over the country will follow suit. This makes every American school hostage to the caprices of a few benighted Texas legislators." (House Bill 4224, introduced in the Texas House of Representatives on March 13, 2009, would, if enacted, require the Texas state board of education to restore the "strengths and weaknesses" language in the Texas state science standards.) A professor of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, Coyne is the author of Why Evolution is 1 (Viking, 2009), which NCSE's Eugenie C. Scott recently praised in Nature as "a good choice to give to the neighbour or teacher who wants to know more about evolutionary biology."

P.P.S . Or maybe not? From Texas Observer.

AND Update from Friday on the final vote. The DMN has McLeroy's whiny comments.

In identical 8-7 votes, board members removed two sections written by Chairman Don McLeroy that would have required students in high school biology classes to study the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of common ancestry and natural selection of species. Both are key principles of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Five Democrats and three Republicans joined to narrowly outvote the seven Republicans on the board aligned with social conservative groups. ..

"This document still has plenty of potential footholds for creationist attacks on evolution to make their way into Texas classrooms," said the group's president, Kathy Miller, who predicted heated battles over the content of biology textbooks in two years.

McLeroy promised as much on Friday, saying that publishers heard the debate and know that "they'll have to get their textbooks approved by us in a few years."