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Next Gen Science Standards unveiled

April 11, 2013 by

Next Generation Science Standards, which aim to teach scientific thinking as well as knowledge, were announced Tuesday, reports, the New York Times. Science teachers, scientists and federal science developed the guidelines, collaborating with 26 states that have pledged to consider adopting them.

The focus . . . (is) on learning how science is done: how ideas are developed and tested, what counts as strong or weak evidence and how insights from many scientific disciplines fit together into a coherent picture of the world.

 

. . . educators foresee more use of real-world examples, like taking students to a farm or fish hatchery to help them learn principles of biology, chemistry and physics.

They want students to learn to construct at least basic versions of scientific models — the simplified representations of reality that undergird tasks as diverse as building a skyscraper that will not collapse, designing a drug to treat illness and accurately predicting the effects of global warming.

In addition to the 26 states involved with the standards-writing process, several others are expected to consider adoption. However, the standards’ call for teaching evolution and man-made climate change may be an issue in some states.

“The standards identify climate change as a core concept for science classes with a focus on the relationship between that change and human activity,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

Middle school students, for instance, will be taught that human activities, including the use of fossil fuels and the subsequent release of greenhouse gases, are “major factors” in global warming. A proposed high school standard requires students to explain, based on evidence, how climate change has affected human activities through such phenomena as altered sea levels, patterns of temperature and precipitation and the impact on crops and livestock.

. . . Other topics set for more thorough study include genetic engineering and its real-world impact on food and medicine.

Conservatives haven’t attacked the Next Gen Science Standards — so far.

James Taylor of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based conservative think tank, told Ed Week the standards are an improvement. ”They are more balanced and fair than most educational guides I have seen put out by advocacy groups or self-professed science groups,” Taylor said.

Everyone agrees that teachers will need training to teach the new science standards.

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Fordham: New science standards need work

February 11, 2013 by

Next Generation Science Standards are coming fast. Public comment on draft 2.0 just ended. The final version is due out in March. Then states will be urged to adopt NGSS, as most did Common Core State Standards in English and math. It’s too soon, advises Fordham, which has been reviewing state science standards for years. ”This important, ambitious, but still seriously troubled document” needs more work, write Checker Finn and Kathleen Porter-Magee.

In an effort to draft “fewer and clearer” standards to guide curriculum and instruction, NGSS 2.0 (like NGSS 1.0) omits quite a lot of essential content. Among the most egregious omissions are most of chemistry; thermodynamics; electrical circuits; physiology; minerals and rocks; the layered Earth; the essentials of biological chemistry and biochemical genetics; and at least the descriptive elements of developmental biology.

. . . Real science invariably blends content knowledge with core ideas, “crosscutting” concepts, and various practices, activities, or applications. . . . (But) authors have forced practices on every expectation, even when they confuse more than clarify. For example, high school students are asked to “critically read scientific literature and produce scientific writing and/or oral presentations that communicate how DNA sequences determine the structure and function of proteins, which carry out most of the work of the cell.” Here as elsewhere, the understanding of critical content—which should be the ultimate goal of science education—becomes secondary to arbitrary and peripheral activities such as “critical reading” and “oral presentation.”

Appendices explain “what is and isn’t present and why,” but the structure is “complex and unwieldy,” Finn and Porter-Magee write. “Will a fifth-grade teacher actually make her way to Appendix K to obtain additional (and valuable) information about science-math alignment and some pedagogically useful examples?”

Science students won’t have to learn much math, leading to “dumbing down,” especially in physics, they fear. And the “assessment boundaries” will ensure that students aren’t challenged.

The new standards don’t require chemistry labs, complains Harry Keller, a chemist. The word “chemistry” is never used, though “chemical reactions” can be found under physical sciences. Without labs.

Physicists also are dissatisfied, reports Ed Week.

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Next gen science standards

June 29, 2012 by

Next Generation Science Standards, now under development, promise to prepare U.S. students for the global economy. But the standards need work, Fordham reviewers argue.

In trying to create fewer, deeper standards, the drafters haven’t developed some prerequisite skills and content and focus too much on conceptual understanding and process rather than scientific knowledge, according to a review team led by biologist Paul Gross.

They went overboard on “scientific practices,” seemingly determined to include some version of such practices or processes in every standard, whether sensible (and actionable, teachable, assessable) or not. This led to distorted or unclear expectations for teachers and students and, often, to neglect of crucial scientific content. For instance, students are frequently asked to “construct explanations” or “construct models.” In addition to being unclear (how does one “construct explanations”?), such directives imply that how students learn the content articulated in the standards is as important as whether they learn it. In reality, content standards should focus on delineating the essential content, and should leave it to curriculum developers and teachers to parse how best to scaffold learning, devise pedagogy, and plan classes.

In addition, the draft science standards aren’t well aligned with Common Core math standards, the reviewers write.

However, it’s only a draft. There’s plenty of time to improve the standards.

 

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Science expectations are ‘All Over the Map’

December 8, 2011 by

States have radically different targets for eighth-grade science proficiency, concludes All Over the Map, a study by the pro-STEM business group, Change the Equation.

Expectations in 37 states were compared to the 2009 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) eighth-grade science test.

New Hampshire has the fewest students meeting state benchmarks — and the highest benchmarks. At every level — basic, proficient and advanced — New Hampshire equals or exceeds NAEP expectations. As a result, only 0.4 percent of New Hampshire eighth graders rank as “advanced” in science. Nearby Connecticut calls  62 percent of its eighth graders “advanced,” but the expectations are “basic” by NAEP standards.

At the “proficient” level, only four states — New Hampshire, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island — are at or above NAEP’s standard. Fifteen states label students “proficient” who’d score below “basic” on NAEP.

Virginia has the lowest definition of “proficient,” followed by Tennessee, Michigan, North Carolina, Iowa, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Oregon, South Carolina, California and Arizona.

ACT estimates 13 percent of eighth-graders nationally are on track to succeed in college science classes.

“Raising the bar on measuring student achievement will take fortitude as some states see the percentage of proficient students plummet,” said CTEq Board of Directors Chair Craig R. Barrett, Ph.D., and retired CEO and Chairman of the Board of Intel.  “Though it may be painful and initially unpopular, we are doing students a disservice if we set the bar low and give them a false sense of achievement that will hinder their learning and growth in school and beyond.”

States are collaborating on Next Generation Science Standards, the report notes. However, setting high content standards won’t help if states set low passing scores on tests.

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