A New Standard

High school teacher Bruce Wellman is convinced that students learn chemistry best when they see how it applies to real life. They could be designing a water filtration system or creating a metal ring from scratch.

That’s one reason Wellman is excited about the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which were created by states to unify the science that students in kindergarten through 12th grade are taught nationwide. The standards highlight the core concepts in science and within specific disciplines, a change designed to focus teachers’ class time on key ideas rather than long lists of facts. And, for the first time, NGSS makes hands-on learning a requirement.

“Our historic problem has been that we had so many things on the table that the kids weren’t able to apply any of it,” says Wellman, who teaches chemistry and engineering chemistry at Olathe Northwest High School in Olathe, Kan. That won’t be the case once the new standards are in place in the next three to five years, he says. “You can’t survive in a lecture-only environment and achieve the performance expectations in NGSS.”

Given that huge shift, NGSS advocates are happy with how the standards have been received so far. A dozen states plus the District of Columbia have adopted them—encompassing almost 30% of U.S. K–12 students. Teachers and other science educators have been the most enthusiastic about the change because they can see the advantage of less memorization and more hands-on experience. Business groups and scientific societies nationwide have endorsed NGSS, including the American Chemical Society, publisher of C&EN.

“If students got to my class in college and could do the things in the NGSS, I would be thrilled,” says Michigan State University chemistry educator Melanie Cooper, who helped create the standards.

But the reception hasn’t been all positive. In some states, NGSS adoption has been caught up in a backlash from political conservatives against federal math and English standards called the Common Core. In addition, some in the science community are worried that important details in their disciplines are missing from NGSS. And there is still a lot of hard work to be done to turn standards into curricula that can be used in a classroom and to train teachers in a new way of learning.

From the beginning of the NGSS process, no one expected the changes to be easy or accepted quickly, explains Juan-Carlos Aguilar, president of the Council of State Science Supervisors, which played a key role in the standards development process. “We are happy with where we are right now,” says Aguilar, the science supervisor for Georgia. “Some states are experiencing roadblocks. Some of those will move away with time.”

NGSS grew out of a push by the nation’s governors, who recognized that states’ varying science standards weren’t keeping up with demand for science-educated citizens. In response, the National Academy of Sciences examined what all students should know about science when they graduate from high school. NAS published a report, “A Framework for K–12 Science Education,” detailing its findings in 2011.

That NAS framework incorporated the best research about how students learn, says Joseph Krajcik, a science education professor at Michigan State who worked to develop NGSS. The NAS framework identifies the core concepts in science and then repeats them at different grade levels and across different courses. It also emphasizes actually doing science rather than just talking about it. “If you want to understand science, you have to use the ideas of science while you are doing science,” he says.

The nonprofit group Achieve, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, oversaw the process of turning the NAS framework into standards that states could adopt. In the end, 26 states opted to participate in that process and consider adopting the final standards. Educators, scientists, and business representatives participated in writing or reviewing the standards.

“Part of what standards do is not tell teachers what to teach—but rally the system behind a common goal,” explains Oregon State University’s Martin Storksdieck, who directed the NAS Board on Science Education when the framework was developed.

A final set of standards was released in April 2013. Stephen L. Pruitt, a former high school chemistry teacher who is leading NGSS creation and implementation effort for Achieve, says they are ecstatic with how adoption has gone so far. But they aren’t pushing states to adopt the standards swiftly. “From the very beginning we have really pushed the patience aspects of adoption,” Pruitt says. “It is a state decision, and states are going to make this decision when it is right for the state.”

The federal government has never been involved with NGSS. But that hasn’t stopped some states’ rights advocates from trying to paint it with the same brush as the Common Core standards for English and math, which were also developed with a push from states. Unlike NGSS, though, the Common Core standards were endorsed by the Department of Education, and states that adopted them were given an advantage when applying for federal education grants. States’ rights advocates used that federal link to cast aspersions on the Common Core as well as NGSS.

The criticism has impaired adoption of NGSS, Aguilar says. “It has stopped development in some states. It has raised barriers in others. Some of those barriers in some states are probably unbridgeable.” For instance, the Wyoming Legislature recently blocked the state from adopting NGSS, in part because the standards address human-caused climate change.

In many states, though, NGSS advocates are just keeping their heads down. “States that are dealing with a Common Core backlash are, probably wisely, choosing to hold off on the science standards until they get settled,” Pruitt says.

And if states need to make some tweaks to pass standards under a different name that doesn’t have NGSS’s political baggage—then that’s okay too, says Heidi Schweingruber, the current director of the NAS Board on Science Education. “The idea is to improve science education,” she says. “If people are doing things that mirror NGSS,” she adds, “that’s okay.”

Some scientists haven’t been as enthusiastic in backing NGSS as the science education community. They are worried that too many details on their subject were cut.

Krajcik from Michigan State says much of that concern is misplaced. He gives the example of chemical bonds. Currently, “kids can memorize definitions of different kinds of bonds, but they don’t really understand what a bond is,” he says. Under NGSS, students will be expected to understand how bonds work, not just know the definition of covalent or ionic bonds.

If high school students who were taught under the current standard had a solid understanding of chemistry, critics of NGSS would have a case, Cooper says. “But I don’t see a huge, deep comprehension of chemistry” among incoming college students. She adds, “I would rather students have a really robust understanding of the core principles. We can worry about getting into the nuts and bolts and a lot of details later.”

What’s more, the standards aren’t meant just for future scientists, ­Schweingruber says. “I think what scientists forget is this is the baseline,” she says. “You are still going to have plenty of kids who are getting more,” like Advanced Placement courses.

While teachers aren’t as concerned about the standards themselves, they are worried whether they will have access to sufficient training and resources, says David Evans, director of the National Science Teachers Association. “NGSS is a different way of teaching. It is much deeper understanding of somewhat less content” than is currently taught, he says. What’s more, many science teachers have never before taught engineering, which NGSS includes.

At Paducah-Tilghman High School in Paducah, Ky., chemistry teacher Amy Cox says the changes cause her trepidation, but the possibilities also excite her. For example, she will have to steer away from traditional “cookbook” labs with a certain outcome. “There is safety in that, but it also limits students’ curiosity and their critical thinking skills,” Cox says.

In Kentucky, Cox is on a team working to turn the standards into lessons. In Kansas, Wellman is doing that too, but he is worried that classroom teachers won’t have time or funding to do the job right.

“Our biggest battle is time,” he says. In Kansas, school district budgets plummeted, so even science team leaders like him are teaching five classes a day. “That is not how you innovate,” Wellman says.

Chemists and other scientists can help by finding out what is happening with NGSS in their state, Achieve’s Pruitt says. He urges them to advocate for the standards in states where they are controversial or help teachers and curriculum developers in states where they have already passed.

“Be aware of the process,” Pruitt says. “Be willing to stand up for what is right for science education and for kids.”