A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas

 

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The framework identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school.  It will serve as the foundation for new K-12 science education standards, which will be developed by a group of states to replace standards issued more than a decade ago.  The framework is also designed to be useful for curriculum and assessment designers, teacher educators, and others who work in K-12 science education.

This project was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

Marking the culmination of a three-year, multiphase process, a 26-state consortium has released the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a detailed description of the key scientific ideas and practices that all students should learn by the time they graduate from high school. The standards are based largely on the 2011 NRC A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas.  Shepherded by the nonprofit educational organization Achieve Inc., the 26 lead states and a team of 40 writers used the framework as a foundation to develop internationally benchmarked science education standards. With the final release, all states can now discuss whether to voluntarily adopt the standards in their public schools.

"We applaud the completion of the standards," said Helen Quinn, chair of the Board on Science Education and of the NRC committee that produced the framework report and professor emerita of physics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Stanford, Calif. "They represent a key step in bringing the science education vision put forward by our framework closer to realization in classrooms across the country." NRC institutional review of the new standards has found that they are consistent with the vision laid out in the NRC report.

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What's Next:

A new NRC committee, to develop A Framework for Assessment of Science Proficiency in K-12 Education, lead by the Board on Testing and Assessment, in collaboration with the Board on Science Education, will recommend strategies for developing assessments that validly measure proficiency in science as laid out in the new K-12 science education framework.