AUSTIN — After a debate drawing national attention, the State Board of Education adopted new science curriculum standards for Texas schools Friday that protect the teaching of evolution championed by many scientists.

The decision on how to handle future evolution education will influence what Texas public schools teach about biology and other sciences, and what is published in new science textbooks, for the next 10 years, starting in the 2010-2011 school year.

Board Chairman Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, and six other social conservatives lost several narrow votes designed to cast specific doubt on evolution.

The new standards no longer contain a provision allowing educators to teach the “weaknesses” of evolutionary theory, part of the current standards.

By 8-7 votes, the board removed specific references to insufficiencies of evidence for common ancestry and natural selection and to “the arguments for and against universal common descent in light of fossil evidence.” All are key parts of evolutionary theory.

The board did approve several amendments creating expectations that students analyze and evaluate such issues as fossil data and the complexity of the cell without specific references to common ancestry and natural selection.

The opportunity for students to analyze and evaluate those controversies pleased McLeroy.

“The science community got its luster back,” he said.

The final board vote to adopt the new standards, 13-2, with dissenting votes by Rene Nunez, D-El Paso, and Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi.

Scientists from throughout Texas and helped shape the new science curriculum standards.

“They came to tell the board ‘this is what science is, this is what you should be doing.' This is the scientific consensus and to completely ignore that in favor of political expediency is very dangerous for education in Texas,” said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the Oakland-based National Center for Science Education.

The conflict over how to teach evolution in public schools is greater in Texas than most other states, she said.

“It's been very frustrating to see the politicization of science education,” Scott said. “It's sad to see that anyplace in the country, but I think it's worse in Texas than just about any other place.”

About 4.6 million students attend Texas public schools.

The evolution issue has made rewriting science curriculum standards in Texas particularly sensitive. The Texas Education Agency received more than 10,000 emails on the subject.

Some board members complained of unspecified threats directed at them from over-zealous partisans.

Geraldine Miller, R-Dallas, said she received both indirect and direct threats of consequences if she did not oppose the evolution perspective.

Berlanga, who has been tending to her ailing husband during his intensive care in a Houston hospital, said people “were even rude about that.”

“I have received many, many threats,” Berlanga said. “I can't tell you what the stress I have been under.”

Berlanga told board members that her husband's condition has stabilized “because of science and because of God.”

The board's final action brought mixed reactions.

“The requirement that students examine, ‘analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations' and examine all sides of scientific evidence is the strongest critical thinking standard in any state science standards,” said Casey Luskin, a lawyer for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which challenges evolution theory. “Looking at today's overall outcome, Texas now leads the nation in requiring critical analysis of evolution in high school science classes.”

Texans Citizens for Science President Steven Schafersman said scientists did not achieve complete victory but got enough to make him happy.

“I think the science standards will be OK. Frankly, the publishers and the authors of the textbooks will be able to use this standard and write good textbooks,” Schafersman said. “They won't be forced to do anything really bad.”

But Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which fought efforts to water down evolution education, was less satisfied.

Although teachers won't be able to teach the “weaknesses” of the theory, she complained that “the document still has plenty of potential footholds for creationist attacks on evolution to make their way into Texas classrooms.”

“Through a series of contradictory and convoluted amendments, the board crafted a road map that creationists will use to pressure publishers into putting phony arguments attacking established science into textbooks,” she said.