Commentary &amp; Feedback on Draft I of the Next Generation Science Standards
Author: Gross, Paul R.
Date: 2012-06-25
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Elementary Secondary Education,Science Education,Academic Standards,Educational Policy,Engineering,Science Curriculum,Core Curriculum,Common Core State Standards,Physical Sciences,Chemistry,Biological Sciences,Earth Science,Space Sciences,Mathematics

In May, Achieve unveiled and solicited comments on the first draft of the Next Generation Science Standards, the product of months of work by a team of writers on behalf of twenty-six states. This review by Fordham provides commentary, feedback, and constructive advice. The following four suggestions are offered by Fordham reviewers for those who will be revising this draft: (1) Rewrite every standard to eliminate the &quot;Practices&quot; statements where they are empty, distracting, or not seriously assessable. Use Practices statements only when they have real content, and be clear in the text on how they are to be accomplished by the student &quot;and how such accomplishment is to be assessed&quot;; (2) Bring into the revision process a few &quot;independent&quot;, highly qualified scientists, i.e., individuals not previously involved with the drafting process, to check every standard in their special disciplines for errors and ambiguities (including assessment challenges), and to recommend corrections for any that they find; (3) For the indispensable parts of natural science that are mathematical and require the use of mathematics, get one or more consultants who are well-versed in &quot;both the science and its component mathematics&quot;, and who also know the CCSS-M, to revise the relevant standards so that they are properly aligned; and (4) Put the next version of the standards themselves (with clarifications and other explanations as needed) into a single, clear, fully searchable document that can be read and used by state and district science specialists and by classroom teachers. Reviewers found the intricately interlocked web pages that were navigated (again and unfortunately, no longer online) are, in their way, beautiful. They noted that they may be appropriate accompaniments to a new standards release. But they do not lend themselves to application in the critical, final stages of curriculum design and classroom instruction at the district and school levels. The science basics in the underlying NRC Framework were sound, as is a good deal of the science evident in this first draft of NGSS. The reviewers concluded that careful revision, with close attention to necessary but missing science, with elimination of content gaps and correction of mostly minor errors, with meticulous alignment to CCSS-M, and with honest expansion of the well-intended but unworkable &quot;omnibus&quot; standards, can yield a quality product, at least as good as the far-too-few outstanding versions that individual states have produced on their own. [This review was written with Lawrence S. Lerner, John Lynch, Martha Schwartz, Richard Schwartz, and W. Stephen Wilson. Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee. For the 2011 review, see ED524696.]