Statewide Standards:

Educators Resource Guide to Statewide Standards – Science
          http://www.eed.state.ak.us/tls/Frameworks2/teachers/science/start/home.shtml

Alaska Department of Education & Early Development Math-Science On-line Links
          http://www.eed.state.ak.us/tls/frameworks/langarts/links/mscilnk.htm#science

Six More States Join Effort to Write Next Generation Science Standards

Six more states have joined the initiative to develop the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), joining the 20 states that were announced as lead state partners earlier this fall.

The newest state partners to lead this effort are Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon. These states will join the first round of states announced in September, which include Arizona, California, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.

The 26 state partners will guide the standards writing process, gather and deliver feedback from state-level committees, and come together to address common issues and challenges.

NSTA is a partner in this initiative along with Achieve—which is leading the writing teams developing the standards—the National Research Council, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Drafts of the science standards will be made available for public input at least twice during the NGSS development process. The NGSS should be completed by the end of 2012.

National Research Council Releases A Framework for K–12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas
The National Research Council (NRC) has released its much-anticipated report that presents a new framework for K–12 science education and identifies the key concepts and practices that all students should learn. A Framework for K–12 Science Education offers a new vision for K–12 education in science and engineering, and represents a significant shift in how these subjects are viewed and taught.
 
According to the report, "K–12 science and engineering education should focus on a limited number of disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts, be designed so that students continually build on and revise their knowledge and abilities over multiple years, and support the integration of such knowledge and abilities with the practices needed to engage in scientific inquiry and engineering design."
 
The framework will serve as the basis for the Next Generation Science Standards, a state-led effort managed by Achieve, Inc. The framework will also inform the work of curriculum and assessment developers, researchers, teacher educators, and others.
 
Read the full report A Framework for K–12 Science Education for more information.

New Website From The AAAS On What Students "Know" About Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has launched an innovative website with more than 600 multiple-choice test questions to help educators assess more precisely what students know about key ideas in science and—just as importantly—the incorrect ideas they have. Project 2061, founded in 1985 by AAAS to improve science education, developed the assessment items and collected data on them under a grant from the National Science Foundation.
 
The new AAAS website (http://assessment.aaas.org) presents detailed information on how a national sample of middle and high school students answered each question, along with an analysis of both their correct and incorrect responses to assess whether students truly understand the science concepts they are being taught. The site also features information on hundreds of misconceptions students have about everything from the size of atoms to whether all organisms have DNA.
 
Knowing these misconceptions and how pervasive they are—which is not typically part of the analysis of test results from state testing or from leading national and international testing organizations—can help teachers improve instruction and better design their own test questions
 
In addition to the test questions themselves, the website includes data on student performance by gender, grade level, and whether or not English is the student's primary language. Each question typically was answered by at least 2000 students in field tests involving school districts across the nation. In 2010, for example, more than 90,000 students in 814 schools participated in the field tests. Project 2061 researchers also conducted on-site interviews with students to gauge the effectiveness of the questions.
 
Read more at:http://www.project2061.org/research/assessment.htm, and for more information, please contact Mary Koppal at 202 326 6643 or mkoppal@aaas.org