I recently posted an article about a Walton-funded school board in Arkansas that refused to pay for up-to-date science textbooks that aligned with the state’s new science standards.
Laura Chapman says don’t bother.
Here is her review:
The state of Arkansas adopted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Their texts are out of date and so are the science texts in many states.
The NGSS standards are so complex that even major publishers are having a hard time generating new texts. As usual, tried and true lessons from the past are being recycled. As usual, field trials of new content and materials are limited by the high costs for the publisher and the cost of revisions that may be needed.. According to EdWeek, districts are having a hard time finding textbooks and other instructional materials aligned with the 2013 NGSS.
EdReports, which claims to be a Consumer Reports for education, is a Gates-funded project. Reviewers for EdREports follow criteria that call for strict alignments with the CCSS and related standards grade-by-grade, and with no content from a prior grade reviewed and reintroduced in the next grade. I have not seen any modifications in the method and criteria for reviewing high school science texts, but EdReports ratings of secondary science tests are expected this fall. https://www.edreports.org/about/our-approach/index.html
Reviews of textbooks are time-intensive and if you are looking for NGSS compliance, the reviews are really complicated. Achieve has also gotten into the reviewing act, but only for a few units, not textbooks.
Teachers working independently have also found that getting NCSS-aligned resources together is hard. According to EdWeek, secondary teachers of science want to see texts and resources that introduce a “phenomenon,” then forward exploration and understanding, then build coherently to deeper understanding through more lessons. I wonder if these teacher-reviewers are assuming that students have encountered science instruction compliant with NGSS prior to high school.
Before high school—K-8— science texts are supposed to align with 381 CCSS standards. Of these, 182 are in math, 96 in ELA reading, 82 in ELA writing, and 21 in science/technical subjects Literacy. All of those standards are supposed to be linked with the 146 core content standards in SCIENCE for K-8. So the standards writers have conjured 527 that are supposed to be met for science-specific learning before high school. If all those standards harbor redundancies, good luck in ferreting them out.
The architecture for high school standards rests on earlier understandings and achievements in; (a) the practices of science, (b) the core concepts within the earth, life, and physical sciences plus engineering…and (c) “themes” that cut across disciplines. That structure has been called three-dimensional. Of course, neither the CCSS nor NGSS offer a roadmap from standards to curricula to tests…but there is plenty of hoopla about new and rigorous standards.
In my experience, writers of standards are almost always serving up more content and connections of “this to that” than can be shoved into texts and other coherently planned instructional materials. I think most experienced teachers want to move well beyond the all too prevalent view of education as text-bound, sage on the stage delivery of content relevant to tests. That view is likely to make science free of the wonderments of eyes-on and hands-on experiments, whether in labs or field work.
According to EdWeek, five publishers have entered the market for NGSS science texts and resources since 2016. Although I have not looked at the texts, there is one constant in marketing these texts: The top line is “100% compliance with the NGSS.” For bells and whistles the ads for these texts make claims on behalf of “real world problem solving,” “STEM careers,” “multi-modality,” “research tested,” “instructional shifts” and the NGSS “philosophy of three dimensional learning.”
I have been through several rounds of textbook writing along with the development with ancillary materials. I have reviewed publications for state adoptions. All that was before the era of the CCSS and not in science, but the challenges of meeting expectations for any marketable and profitable product are usually underestimated…especially by writers of standards who really do want one-size-fits-all education, and now with every dimension of instruction described in computer code and “aligned ” with texts and tests.
Anyone who has worked on the publishing side knows that profits drive what publishers can and will deliver. In the best of worlds, teacher-made lessons and experiments would be central. Texts, resources from the library/media room or accessed online would be backup. All in-class studies would be enriched by demos and meet-ups with living breathing scientists and projects students initiate based on their curiosity and interest.
The end-game of standards-based education was and is standardized learning…with computer-based delivery of instruction envisioned from the get-go. Current hoopla about personalized education is mostly hot air. Unless you are speaking of artificial intelligence, learning is always personal. It does not need to be “ized.”
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/06/06/educators-scramble-for-texts-to-match-science.html
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Laura, Thank you for this insightful post that addresses one of my top concerns; the Louis Gerstner science standards aka NGSS. RJR Nabisco CEO Gerstner started campaigning for standards based education in the early 1990’s. He became the chairman on the first ever non-profit ever formed by the national governors association; Achieve Inc. Achieve wrote the NGSS with Gerstner remaining at the helm until they were published.
The three links I have provided here are to posts I have written about the framework, the standards and about them being so useless that California re-wrote them.
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Thank you.
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No respect to Cali after the Sacramento big wigs threw away the 1997 Standards and accepted CCSS instead. Moreover, despite that CCSS allows teaching algebra in 8th grade, it has been pushed to 9th grade, there are some pockets of resistance. Also, the traditional AGA path has been replaced with integrated math, and all the integrated programs follow the flawed NCTM ideas of investigation, context, groupwork and technology.
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So, the effort has been made to connect math and science? Kinda makes sense to study uniform motion at about the same time when studying linear equations in math, or to study gravity when studying quadratic function. Now make physics mandatory, and this will be a real step forward.
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I hope you are referring to the NGSS. Read the standards, you’ll find few references to quantitative science and data based lab work.
The connection between math and science has fallen solely on science teachers. Chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy, and meteorology are all quantitative sciences that make math the means it was meant be rather than the end that math educators make it.
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Bill Gates is going to get into meddling in “curriculum”. He blames curriculum materials for ruining his Common Core stacked ranking scheme, “Teachers’ goodwill toward those [Common Core] expectations crumbled as states linked them to tests and evaluations before ensuring that teachers could access lots of matching, high-quality materials.” So, he wants to get the curriculum websites up and running first, then he can go back to linking tests and evaluations. He figures people want fewer teachers. He’s wrong. So, it’s a safe bet that Gates is telling textbook publishers what to do, which is like Dan Quayle telling Paris Hilton how to speak in public. Nothing good will come of it.
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lovely simile: right on the nose
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Beware the latest attempt by Achieve to profit from disruption. This “non-profit” entrepreneurial group is deep into the process of re-making the K to 12 science curriculum in the very image of Common Core math and ELA. Out with content and in with process skills. A formula for failure that will negatively impact US science education for every state that took the NGSS bait: the typical sky-is-falling mumbo jumbo nonsensical chain of misrepresentations and snake oil bullshit. They are trying desperately to bring back to life the debunked constructivist/discovery methodologies and are also promoting an integrated approach that will confuse more than enlighten. The NGSS cheerleaders continue to conflate the way professionally trained scientists do science with the way children learn science. This kids are mini-adults approach seems to appeal to adults who never worked with kids.
Here’s the worn out laundry list of reasons that current science instruction needs disruption and reinvention:
We have to stop teaching science through rote memorization
We are falling behind other countries on PISA tests
We have to start teaching students to think like scientists
We have to show important connections, unifying themes, and cross-cutting concepts
We have to integrate disciplines like real scientists
We have to engage students so that they can construct or discover their own knowledge
NGSS as a Trojan Horse filled with consultants, code writers, test developers, publishers, privatizers, and corporatists foaming at the mouth at yet another opportunity to pillage and plunder public school resources.The Next Generation Science Standards will be a Common Core redux that wastes billions of dollars, millions of teacher hours, and a generation of innocent children fallen victim to all those duped by the entrepreneurs at Achieve, Fool us once shame on them. Fool us twice . . .
Sample NGSS:
Kindergarten
Analyze data to determine if a design solution works as intended to change the speed or direction of an object with a push or a pull.
Communicate solutions that will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or other living things in the local environment.
Construct an argument supported by evidence for how plants and animals (including humans) can change the environment to meet their needs.
GRADE 1
Plan and conduct investigations to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light.
Use materials to design a solution to a human problem by mimicking how plants and/or animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs.
Read texts and use media to determine patterns in behavior of parents and offspring that help offspring survive.
GRADE 2
Analyze data obtained from testing different materials to determine which materials have the properties that are best suited for an intended purpose.
Make observations to construct an evidence-based account of how an object made of a small set of pieces can be disassembled and made into a new object.
Compare multiple solutions designed to slow or prevent wind or water from changing the shape of the land.*
GRADE 3
Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.
Ask questions to determine cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two objects not in contact with each other.
Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms.
Analyze and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of the organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago.
Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.
Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related.
Seriously . . . ?
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Brilliant analysis! NGSS is a s***show at my middle school. The teachers are confused; the kids increasingly hate science. Of course, the teachers blame themselves, not the standards. But the standards are the main problem. Just as textbook publishers are confounded about how to make a coherent text based on them (as Laura notes), teachers are confounded about how to make coherent lessons out of them. Not only do the standard writers misapprehend the nature of kids’ brains, they misapprehend the limits of ordinary teachers’ abilities. If every teacher were a Michael Jordan of the profession, maybe these standards would have a chance (though probably not). But no profession is full of Michael Jordans.
Oh, what a disaster. Keep it simple, people. The way to improve an imperfect, straightforward old school approach to science teaching is not to replace it with a complex miasma of untested, unworkable, incoherent mandates!
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Not a expert in science education, but I did look at all of the standards, up to grade 8. The bizarre expectations from kindergarten are still firmly in memory. Construct and argument….etc.
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The elementary NGSS are not just developmentally absurd, they will also be almost impossible for non-science teachers to implement properly. Expecting 5, 6, 7, 8 year old children to “think like a scientist” without any foundational knowledge will produce more frustration than anything. Elementary teachers without a very strong science background can very easily do more harm than good. The amount of PD time required to remedy this will never be made available.
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NGSS – Future Fail On its Way!
The roadmap to disaster:
Write abstract, confusing, jargon saturated, skills-centric, content weak, K to 12 science standards in your ivory tower.
Conflate the ways that children best learn science with the ways that experts in their field, do science. Treating kids like mini-adults cannot work in science education.
Be sure that elementary standards are developmentally inappropriate by emphasizing abstract skill sets and omitting simple, concrete, straight forward, important content knowledge (facts and ideas)
Include the word “engineering” to satisfy the STEM worshippers, but take the generally accepted meaning and twist it into a vague, nebulous, and essentially useless form
Provide little training and not nearly enough TIME for teachers to develop substantial science programs. Be sure to include a fleet of clueless consultants to confuse and confound elementary teachers while misrepresenting the fundamental goals of scientific literacy
Provide limited funding for science supplies, equipment, and facilities
Flood the market with crappy, canned science and engineering activities and projects – and even worse, computer/online programs – all developed by non-teachers.
Write and administer abstract, confusing, jargon saturated, skills-centric, content weak, K to 12 science tests based on said standards (in your ivory tower).
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What is sad is that lots of science is “hands on” learning, not staring at a screen. Even in elementary school, the best science programs have a lab component.
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I have taught “hands-on” science (and engineering) for well over 30 years. I can state conclusively that the actual “learning” associated with “hands-on” activities is very hard to come by and one of the most overrated ideas in all of education. Kids have more fun when working with equipment and materials, yet this experience often gets in the way of learning. However “hands-on” activities do have other values. The reason for this is that in order for students to learn science facts, concepts, principles, laws, and vocabulary they must be forced to think. So “hands-on” may be fun, interesting because its different, and somewhat motivational, it is very limited when it comes to learning. There are a small handful of lab activities that truly help the thoughtful student to learn science better. Many more provide distractions that require refocusing student thinking after the hands-on is over.
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Thank you for puncturing the hoary cliche that “hands on learning” is the pinnacle of pedagogy. You are a true teacher, a true thinker, not just a mindless follower of pedagogical fashion. How I wish more teachers actually thought about the fashions they’re following. Education in America is crippled by the tyranny of flawed-yet-unexamined doctrines like this one.
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Educational fads are very costly, and not just taxpayer dollars.
Project Based “learning”
Discovery
Constructivism
Hands-on “learning”
These all sound appealing to the unknowing adult. You can get an entire BOE drooling with delight at the mere mention of this stuff.
The fact that we have so many professional educators being duped is really just embarrassing.
In science, this why a well designed lab report that gets students to think and reflect and use precise scientific language is much more important than the lab work itself.
Its good to know that there are a few teachers out there that pay attention to the kids.
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When I was a naive young teacher, I assumed the world of education would be filled with competing philosophies and feisty debates. We were, after all, the petit intelligentsia. Alas, I’ve found nothing of the sort. Teachers seem eager to huddle around a safe orthodoxy about “best practices” and throw stones at anyone who has the temerity to question the party line. Debate? What’s there to debate? We know the truth! Most fellow teachers, even very smart ones, are dumbfounded when I try to engage them in a discussion about the validity of Common Core or other elements of the orthodoxy. Most have zero appetite for such a discussion.
Conservatives like to decry the government monopoly on education. I decry the ed school monopoly on ideas. Intellectual stagnation afflicts our profession. Why do we have such a dearth of critical thinking amongst teachers?
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I would urge you to get a copy of the book by cognitive scientist Danial Willingham, “Why Students Don’t Like School”
After you read it, pass it on to every teacher in your school.
It will end any debate about how kids learn best.
A must read for every teacher.
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