Kansas State Department of Education

Under the original Kansas Constitution adopted in 1859, the Superintendent of Public Instruction was established as a partisan elected office, with responsibility for overseeing the state's public school system. In 1966, Kansas voters ratified a constitutional amendment that eliminated the elected Superintendent, replacing the position with a ten-member elected Board of Education with responsibility for appointing the Commissioner. The ten districts are drawn every ten years by combining four adjoining State Senate districts. ==Intelligent design controversies==

In 1999, the Board voted to eliminate most references to evolution, the age of the Earth, and the origin of the universe from the state's science standards and to remove these topics from the state's standardized tests. The Board relied heavily on material from the Creation Science Association of Mid America in constructing science standards that minimized the teaching of evolution. The Board was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for the new rules. However, after the 2000 elections altered the composition of the Board, it reversed its 1999 decision, instead requiring instruction on all those topics and restoring them to standardized tests. A shift after the 2004 election restored a conservative majority on the Board, which voted to adopt new science standards, effective in 2007, that mandated equal time for the theories of evolution and "intelligent design." The decision was condemned by Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who argued, "If we're going to bring high-tech jobs to Kansas and move our state forward, we need to strengthen science standards, not weaken them." Finally, following yet another shift at the 2006 election, which elected a moderate majority, the Board reversed the decision and restored the state's original science-based standards. ==References==