Quality Science Education for All

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Quality Science Education for All (QSEA) is a non-profit creationist foundation focused on challenging evolution as taught in public schools.

Part of the intelligent design movement, QSEA has been involved in legal disputes over science textbooks used in classrooms in several states, including Minnesota, Texas, and California. Other notable actions include Caldwell v. Roseville Joint Union High School District, a case brought "so that citizen proposals to implement 'Quality Science Education' in their local public school will be considered on their scientific and educational merits, rather than on the basis of pre-existing prejudices and bias."

QSEA is operated by the husband and wife team of Larry and Jeanne Caldwell, of Granite Bay, California. Larry Caldwell lists himself as founder and president.

Larry Caldwell, a pro-Intelligent Design activist and attorney, has been active in bringing litigation in causes favoring the intelligent design movement. In the spring of 2005 he sued the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and its director, Eugenie Scott, alleging that Scott and the center made false claims in an article she published in California Wild, the magazine of the California Academy of Sciences [1]. The suit claimed that Scott misstated that Larry Caldwell had proposed the names of two creationist books to his local school board and that Scott incorrectly stated the date of the Georgia evolution disclaimers and misspelled a party's last name. That suit was settled when the defendants agreed to publicly acknowledge and correct the errors [2]. This event was seized upon by the leading organization of the intelligent design movement, the Discovery Institute, to criticize their historical opponents, the NCSE [3]. The QSEA and the Discovery Institute have collaborated on a number of occasions on other projects related to the movement.

In October 2005 Caldwell received a favorable ruling in a federal civil rights lawsuit he brought arising out of his year-long effort to persuade the Roseville Joint Union High School District to adopt his Quality Science Education Policy, which favors a Teach the Controversy approach to the teaching of evolution in science curricula for public schools.

Also in October 2005 Caldwell filed suit in federal court against the University of California, Berkeley, claiming their website Understanding Evolution violates separation of church and state by linking to sites which claim that religious faith is not incompatible with evolution. In March of 2006 the court granted the school's motion to dismiss the suit as on the basis that the plaintifs failed to establish that they suffered any restriction of their freedom of speech or freedom to practice their religion.

Though much smaller in scale than the Thomas More Law Center, another not-for-profit law center widely considered to be intelligent design movement's de facto legal arm, QSEA has in its first year of existence brought no fewer than 3 separate lawsuits to further the movement's agenda. Critics have suggested that QSEA, were it to continue its pattern of litigation, could be considered a vexatious litigant.

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