If you are reading this and live in the U.S., you already know what I am about to describe. In this country local districts/counties make most of the decisions regarding education issues. Four national level pieces of legislation, listed at the bottom of the post, affect schools, but even these are very much tempered by decisions made at the state, and more often than not, at the local level.

Standards and curriculum

Some countries, like the UK, have a national curriculum. That is not true in the U.S. Each state can choose to adopt their own standards and can choose to adopt associated curricula. However, it is likely that decision-makers at the county/district level make curriculum decisions (some states have school districts that coincide with their counties, in others, they are separate from their counties.)

That means that there is no one science curriculum, even for any one state, much less the whole country.  Therefore, ensuring a solid grounding in science requires action in many thousands of school districts.  That’s not an easy nut to crack.

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

In 2013, a consortium of 26 states and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Research Council (NRC), and a non-profit, Achieve, introduced the Next Generation Science Standards after extensive work to develop them, based on the prior development of A Framework for K-12 Science Education.

There is no requirement for states to adopt the standards, and as of 2017, 19 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) have done so. As many as 21 other states have shown interest or adopted standards based on the NGSS. To that extent, there is some commonality in science standards for K-12 education. 

However, adoption of a standard is not the same thing as fully developing an associated curriculum, and ensuring the curriculum is fully adopted and executed in the classrooms. Based on my conversations with science teachers, that is an ongoing process. Two key aspects to fully realizing the potential of the NGSS are public support for the effort, and adequate funds to develop the curricula and provide the necessary resources for execution in the classroom.

Polarization and pandemic

In a different public climate, those requirements for furthering use of the NGSS would simply be a matter of competition with time and resources with other subjects taught in schools. That, in itself is not easy, as the other subjects are important, too. But in a highly politically polarized America, science education is being questioned in a way that goes well beyond resource use. Although the pandemic continues to highlight the need for science and science understanding in our society, it, too, has become polarized.

The effort needed to ensure a deep scientific grounding for students is now harder than ever. I believe it is worth it.

Federal education legislation, the Framework, and the NGSS

Every Student Succeeds Act (2015)

Child Care and Development Block Grant (1990)

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (1974)

Education Sciences Reform Act (2002)

A Framework for K-12 Science Education, PRactices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/13165/a-framework-for-k-12-science-education-practices-crosscutting-concepts. 2012. Last accessed June 17, 2022.

Next Generation Science Standards. nextgenscience.org. Last accessed June 17, 2022.

The image below is an example of a high school science standard from the NGSS, from the following website:

https://news.schoolsdo.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ngss_evid_hs_ls_1_5.jpg