The Next Generation Science Standards is one of those gargantuan things that is just amazingly impressive. Awesome even. Science is so many things. It is an approach and it is what that approach has taught us. There’s this single idea (i.e., science), and the different disciplines within science.
Trying to organize all that mess into a single anything is just incredible. I often come across what ECD (Evidence Centered Design) calls a domain model and am flabbergasted that anyone was able to do it.
Wow.
The thing is, NGSS is so commonly misunderstood. It was an effort to organize a domain – or set of domains – both to establish standards and to create supports for educators to help student reach those standards. Clearly, it is influenced by ECD – and it even uses some ECD terminology. But unlike ECD, it is at least as focused on supporting curriculum development and instruction as it is on supporting assessment.
The most common misunderstanding is in which part of NGSS constitutes the actual standards. There are the PEs (Performance Expectations), the CCCs (Cross Cutting Concepts), the DCIs (Disciplinary Core Ideas) and the SEPs (Science and Engineering Practices). Now, my favorites are the SEPs, but that does not make them the standards.
What Does NGSS Say?
Luckily, the official website of NGSS, <nextgenscience.org> has a page for Understanding the Standards. It explains exactly what is going on.
The second paragraph explains that the three dimensions (i.e., CCCs, DCIs and the SEPs) predate NGSS, and that they were “introduced in the National Research Council's A Framework for K-12 Science Education.” Clearly, the standards part of NGSS is not found in those three dimensions that NGSS inherited from The Framework. Rather, the NGSS standards would have to be found in the parts that the NGSS coalition wrote later — albeit inspired by NRC’s Framework.
A little further down the page is a video which explains further. At around the one minute mark, the narrator says, “The standards have been developed as student performance expectations, which are statements of what students should know and be able to do by the end of instruction.” In case the text on the page was not clear, the video is rather definitive. The standards are the Performance Expectations.
So, What’s the Problem, Then?
The PEs are built from the three dimensions, but the PEs have far greater specificity than anything in any of the three dimensions. For example, HS-PS1-1. (“Use the periodic table as a model to predict the relative properties of elements based on the patterns of electrons in the outermost energy level of atoms.”) does not say anything about protons, atomic number or atomic mass. In fact, none of the PEs mention atomic number or atomic mass in the context of the periodic table of the elements. (Only two PEs even mention the periodic table, at all.)
Does this mean that the periodic table is not important? Does this mean that those parts of the periodic table are not important?
No. That is not what that means.
Instead, if forces us to confront the relationship between learning goals (or outcomes) and learning pathways. It certainly makes us think harder about the differences between instruction and assessment.
No one would ever suggest that atomic number and atomic mass are unimportant concepts. No one would ever suggest that their place in the periodic table is unimportant either. (Frankly, the periodic table of the elements in another one of those awesome works of genius.) If you care about those aspects of the periodic table, no one is arguing with you. You can teach that, and that stuff is important to understand on the way to being able to meet the performance expectation.
But understanding – or demonstrating understanding – of how the periodic table of the elements is built upon atomic number and can be used to look up atomic mass is not “what students should know and be able to do by the end of instruction.” Precursor? Yes. Is it allowed? Of course!
Is it required? No. No, it is not.
Oh, It Hurts!
Yes. It hurts. There are things in science that I love (e.g., Do you understand how Dmitri Mendeleev arranged the periodic table by atomic number AND electron levels? It’s amazing!) which are not a part of the Performance Expectations. How can that not be in the standards!? I love that stuff!
There are things all across science (particularly things found in the DCIs, but also things in my favorite dimension (the SEPs) that did not make it into the PEs. Important things.
Let me be abundantly clear: Some of my favorite ideas and fact from science are not in the Next Generation Science Standards Performance Expectations.
But let me be equally clear: I do not have the right to say what the standards are. That is up to the standards writing bodies and the state legislatures that endorse them (or edit and then endorse them). The fact that I think that something is important does not mean that I get to make it a part of the standards. The fact that I can make a compelling case for important it is and for how many others think that it is important does not give me that authority, and it does not overwhelm the stronger cases that it is not in the standards.
Yeah, that fact hurts, too. Being both technically and morally right does not give me authority over our democratic institutions to decide what is taught in all of our schools and/or should be on our official assessments. That fact hurts me every day.
No, No, You’re Wrong Because I’ve Read…
You’ve read the NGSS Structure: How to Read the Next Generation Science Standards document, linked to on that same page? You've found where it has said stuff like, “[The DCIs are] the most essential ideas in the major science disciplines that all students should understand during 13 years of school.” Yeah. It does say that. But depending on that kind of sentiment misses the nature and intention of NGSS – intention that is made explicitly clear in that same document.
NGSS is clear about what it means by standards. Its authors were quite aware that science is a broad umbrella and not every student will – or even could – learn all of it. NGSS posits that the standards should be the part of science knowledge (and approaches) that all students should learn. They wrote NGSS’s PEs as standards, “to ensure that this set of PEs is achievable at some reasonable level of proficiency by the vast majority of students.” The PEs should be the standard part – the baseline – for all students.
NGSS is also clear that these PEs (as standards) are a floor, not a ceiling. “A second essential point is that the NGSS performance expectations should not limit the curriculum.” Schools are free to teach more than the standards. Even individual teacher can – and do! – bring in their own favorite ideas, applications and activities. Curriculum writers are free to go beyond the NGSS standards. In many cases, they should.
In fact, the PEs are likely not sufficient to fill an entire curriculum. In fact, there likely should be much more taught than the PEs. But NGSS says that the PEs are the most important parts, and they have to be taught. The rest? Well, different students in different classrooms, schools, districts and states can be taught from the rest in various combinations of ways.
But the NGSS performance expectations are the standard part. They are the standards.
But NGSS Says That Some States Do Include More
Yes, the authors of NGSS are quite aware that they do not control the states. They are quite aware that states can adapt and modify others’ work before adopting them as the official state standards. “Other states also include the content of the three foundation boxes and connections to be included in ‘the standard [sic].’” The primacy of our democratic institutions to make such decisions is simply a fact, and NGSS acknowledges that fact.
But if you are going to depend on that idea to suggest that NGSS does not get to say what the standards are then you simply have to accept that each state gets to decide. That still takes you and me out of the equation. If a state has said that the PEs are the standards, then the PEs are the standards, and it doesn’t matter what you or I prefer, or what NGSS’s authors intended. And if a state says that it is more than the PEs, then it doesn’t matter what you or I prefer, or what NGSS’s authors intended. (Yeah, in those cases, this blog post and our disagree is simply moot.)
What Does This Mean for Assessment?
There is a deep philosophical issue at play here.
It is easy to answer that question when we are talking about classroom assessment. Classroom assessment should assess whatever is taught in that classroom. No question. Classroom assessment should be aligned with instruction – the full breath of instruction. (Or maybe what the school and/or district has decided should be the full breadth of instruction.)
But our big formal standardized assessment? That poses a different set of issues. Should our assessment aim to measure everything that could be taught, and thereby exist as this standard against which to measure ourselves against our greatest curricular and/or learning aspirations? When I took geometry at this weird program, the final exam was out of 200 points, but we only needed like 60 points to pass. The exam covered everything, but we just needed to demonstrate knowledge and skills in enough areas to show we deserved to move on. Not everything. Just enough.
That is not how assessment generally works in America. That is why that experience still stands out in my memory, so many decades later. In our assessments, we want every student to get every point. Our aspirations for assessment is that the test takers top out. We award our highest marks only for students who approach 100%. And there is too much science to expect that every student has a chance of doing that. We do not even require students to take all the science classes. Sure, some high school students may take biology, chemistry, physics, AP chemistry, AP physics and astronomy. But even those kids didn’t take AP biology or earth science. Staying at the high school level, how many states or school districts require even four years of science?
How could it be fair to give assessment on content that students have not had the opportunity to learn? How could be fair to give assessments on content that teachers were not on notice that their “students should…be able to do by the end of instruction”? How is that fair to students, to educators, to districts and/or anyone else who might face consequences for student performance on these assessments?
I can imagine a world that has NGSS-aligned assessments that address all of the Performance Expectations and go on to sample from other content. But I do not know how decisions about which of that other content should be sampled should be made, which raises those challenging opportunity to learn and notice to teachquestions. Even putting those concerns aside, though, we would have to make sure we are doing a truly excellent job on assessing the PEs before we even begin to think about assessing anything else.