Science Standards

By: Jack Hassard

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The science standards movement represents an unimaginative design of science teaching. It’s unimaginative in the sense that the standards-makers worked within a box of content that has been contained since the later part of the 19th Century. In the last decade of that century, the Committee of Ten recommended a science curriculum (as part of a larger school curriculum) that is not much different what we see in the textbooks used in today’s science courses. Indeed, the committee’s that wrote the NGSS apparently did not stray far from this earlier science curriculum. The standards-based movement has impeded inquiry-based science teaching because of the rules of Federal mandates to test the life out of every student, at every grade level. The Next Generation of Science Standards need to be considered in the context of America’s testing storm. Not only are new standards being used to design content-based high-stakes tests, these once a year achievement tests will be used to pass or fail students, teachers and administrators. The reformers have convinced the public that achievement tests are valid measures of what students learn. But what is even more amazing, is progress on tests and value added measures will be generated based on flawed data, and modeling and to determine the worth of teachers and administrators. The 21st Century reform of science education needs reform. In this eBook you will find a collection of essays that I wrote on the Art of Teaching Science Blog over the past year on science standards, their development, and predicted effects on student learning.