would be made public in coming weeks.
Although Mr. Pruitt emphasized that all states will have a chance to weigh in on the standards at various points, a group of approximately six to eight states will serve as “lead state partners” in their development. Achieve is inviting states to apply to participate in that capacity, he said, and the organization will rely on a group of outside experts to help make a final decision, with the goal of having a diverse group of states both geographically and in how they currently organize their science standards.
“It is going to be truly a state-led effort,” said Mr. Pruitt, a former state official in the Georgia education department—including as a science supervisor—with a dozen years of experience teaching high school science.
In addition, a broad-based “stakeholder group” will provide feedback throughout the process, he said.
“We’ve got about 700 names on that list so far, from K-12 educators to prominent scientists, industry leaders, a group that we wanted to be very representative of the country,” Mr. Pruitt said. “This is an effort that is going to require a lot of transparency and a lot of people being engaged in the process throughout.”
There will be some notable differences between the effort to develop science standards and the recent work on common standards in math and English, he said. Achieve also played a key role in crafting the common core.
For one, unlike with the math and English standards, participating states will not be required to make a prior commitment to adopt the science standards. Also, Mr. Pruitt said no plan exists to his knowledge for the federal government to create any particular incentives for states to adopt the standards, as is the case with the math and English standards.
Mr. Pruitt himself was a member of the NRC framework panel, though he had to step down from that position when he joined Achieve’s staff last summer.
Even as the framework emphasizes the importance of scientific practice, he said, that in no way should be interpreted as backing away from the notion that students should have a clear understanding of critical scientific concepts.
“I want to be real clear that there is going to be plenty of content, but also [a focus on] how scientists use it,” he said. “So we want it to be more than just students memorizing facts, but we recognize that science is a body of knowledge.”
The framework document itself explains the governing philosophy behind its approach to science content.
“The continuing expansion of scientific knowledge makes it impossible to teach all the ideas related to a given discipline in exhaustive detail during the K-12 years,” it says. “But given the cornucopia of information available today virtually at a touch—people live, after all, in an information age—an important role of science education is not to teach ‘all the facts’ but rather to prepare students with sufficient core knowledge so that they can later acquire additional information on their own.”
Stepping back, the report’s authors say that the ultimate goal of the framework is to ensure that by the end of 12th grade, all students have “some appreciation of the beauty and wonder of science,” have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage meaningfully in public discussions, are careful consumers of scientific and technological information, and have the skills to enter careers in science, engineering, and technology if they wish.
Students should “see how science and engineering are instrumental in addressing major challenges that confront society today, such as generating sufficient energy, preventing and treating diseases, maintaining supplies of clean water and food, and solving the problems of global environmental change,” the committee says.
In addition, the panel expressed its hope that the vision of change in science education laid out in the document will “motivate and inspire” more people, and a better representation of the nation’s diverse population, to pursue careers in science and engineering.
Vol. 30, Issue 37