By the time you read this column, Common Core’s “Next Generation
Science Standards” may have been released. (They’re scheduled to
go public sometime this month.) I hear tell that a draft was
briefly available earlier this year if you were savvy (or lucky)
enough to visit the right website at precisely the right moment.
I wasn’t, but I did find a well-informed critique of the science
standards on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s website. The
expert panel commended some of the new guidelines’ strong
directions, including, for example, their clear, honest, and
science-based treatment of evolution. But the panel also had
some significant criticisms. Among those concerns is how well
the science standards will mesh with the new math standards,
which have already been released. Although the critics saw
improvement over earlier drafts, they noted that the cross-
pollination of science and math standards still need more work.
Clearly, if we’re reconsidering how to teach both science and
math, it makes sense that the r