Breaking news! The ruling is in. Judge Jones sided with the Discovery Institute and ruled against the Dover school board policy. No promotion of biological design in public school science classrooms.
A better approach, in my opinion, is to allow biological design to flourish as a metascience as Dr. Robin Collins suggests here. As a metascience, biological design will receive the time and support it needs to mature and flourish.
Scientists make wonderful pragmatists and lousy philosophers. Philosophical arguments about science will not convince them to switch away from their current research paradigms. In order to gain traction and acceptance, design based research programs need to produce more discoveries, more break throughs and more cures. Research grants will follow, and so will more scientists. One interesting area to keep a close eye on is the oxymoronic research area known as directed evolution. It may prove to be an interesting testing ground of paradigms (design -vs- chance). I hope to post more on this interesting subject as I learn more about it. A second area where I think design based programs may yield superior results is in forensic biology. Just a hunch.
Once biological design gains traction in the scientific community, and I have every reason to expect it will, then you will see a more interesting trial than the one we witnessed in Dover.
Update: Some legal and philosophical analysis of the case from an expert over at Through A Glass Darkly.