The words of the amendment survive in modified form in the bill's conference committee report but do not carry the weight of law.
One result of this briefing was that in 2001 Senator Santorum proposed incorporating pro-intelligent design language, crafted in part by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, into the No Child Left Behind bill.
It is a sense of the Senate that deals with the subject of intellectual freedom with respect to the teaching of science in the classroom, in primary and secondary education.
"[6]Despite the amendment lacking the weight of law, the conference report is constantly cited by the Discovery Institute and other ID supporters as providing federal sanction for intelligent design.
[7] In response to criticisms of the Institute stating that the amendment was a federal education policy requiring inclusion of alternatives to evolution be taught,[8] which it was not, in 2003 intelligent design's three most prominent legislators, John Boehner, Judd Gregg and Santorum provided a letter to the Discovery Institute giving it the go ahead to invoke the amendment as evidence of "Congress's rejection of the idea that students only need to learn about the dominant scientific view of controversial topics".
The position of scientists and science educators has been that although evolution has generated a great deal of political and philosophical debate it is, in the scientific fields, regarded as fact.
As a response, a coalition of 96 scientific and educational organizations wrote a letter to the conference committee, urging that the amendment be stricken from the final bill.
[10] In addition, opponents of the amendment cite the stated agenda of the Discovery Institute's Phillip Johnson use of the "Wedge strategy" to "affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind"[11] and thereby return Christian creationism in the guise of intelligent design to public school classrooms.