Kathy Cox

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Kathy Cox is the current superintendent of public schools for the U.S. state of Georgia, and is a Republican. A teacher by occupation, Cox also served two terms, from 1998 to 2002, in the Georgia General Assembly, representing Peachtree City, Georgia, prior to her election as superintendent in 2002. Cox sought re-election in 2006, and she easily defeated Democratic challenger Denise Majette (a former U.S. representative), earning almost 60 percent of the vote.

Cox is not related to Cathy Cox, a Democrat who was Georgia's elected secretary of state from 1999 until 2007. The similarity in names became the subject of news stories in 2002, when Kathy Cox's defeated opponent, Barbara Christmas, complained that she had lost because of voter confusion between the two Coxes. But no proof of this emerged, and because of Christmas' own unusual surname, media coverage of the complaint was largely tongue-in-cheek.

[edit] Evolution Controversy

Cox made national news in 2004 by proposing to strike the word "evolution" from Georgia textbooks and replace it with the phrase "biological changes over time". In justifying her decision, she claimed evolution was a buzzword that created problems for teachers in conservative rural areas, and that she had not been attempting to water down the subject matter^[1].