This is the text of a letter to the editor of the West County Times. The letter was, ultimately, not published, since the letters editor tries to keep publications down to one letter per month per individual (they published another letter of mine on a different subject).
In yesterday's elections, the Dover, PA, school board appears to have been turned out of office en masse. So maybe this letter is no longer relevant. In Kansas, on the other hand ...
A scientific theory has to be testable, to find out whether or not it is wrong; "intelligent design" is not. Worse, and in line with testability, a scientific theory not only has to show why things work one way, it also has to explain why they don't work in some other way; "intelligent design", if you accept it as valid, introduces such a degree of arbitrariness ("miracles") into the functioning of the universe that things could work in any way whatsoever.
Finally, at the high-school level science classes generally concentrate on describing observable phenomena, not teaching theories of why things work in certain ways. Evolution, like gravity, is an observable phenomenon, as anyone who has encountered a strain of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis will willingly, though perhaps not gladly, testify. "Intelligent design" is, at best, not an observable phenomenon.
If the Dover school board wants to teach that Pan-ku the Nebula created the universe and the goddess Nüwa created the human race, that's fine with me. Just don't call it "science".