Like many others, I’ve had high hopes for the Next Generation
Science Standards. Right now I’m struggling to keep my spirits
up. Having just finished reading the review of the second draft
(NGSS 2.0) prepared for the Fordham Institute by nine impressive
scientists and mathematicians (who, collectively, have teaching
experience at all grade levels), I see more problems than can be
fixed between now and March—the arbitrary deadline set for
releasing the final draft of these standards. For a quick take
on the many serious problems, see the review’s Forward by
Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee. Or, for an even
faster look at the main issues, see Finn and Porter-Magee’s
recent blog post. In both, they raise eight “critical problems.”
While I agree that all eight are truly critical, I’d like to
draw attention to three (the following are quotes from the blog
post): - In an effort to draft “fewer and clearer” standards to
guide curriculum and instruction, NGSS 2.0 (like NGSS 1.0) omits
quite a lot of ess