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Desks in a 5th grade classroom, in Woodbury, N.J., feature inspirational messages for students preparing to take Common Core exams in May.
(AP Photo/Crystal Ramirez)
By Charles Ault Jr.
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) juggernaut has arrived in Oregon in the wake of the Common Core ("New science standards coming to Oregon," May 11) and have "not faced as much pushback."
Maybe they should.
Overbearing and ill-informed state interest in measurable objectives seeks to refashion the wild thickets of learning with rather sterile grids and metrics for efficient management.
Rather than true reform, the new standards are merely old wine in new bottles as well as a thinly veiled promotion of the myth of "the" scientific method. Mapping the aims for learning science remains stuck in the quagmire of overzealous simplification -- a boon to measurement but a curse to cognitive and disciplinary complexity.
Phrases mentioned in the article that appeared in The Oregonian -- "cause and effect," "stability and change" -- have been marketed for decades as guideposts for teaching science. Whether debating the number of steps in the scientific method (ongoing), reducing all fields to small set of process skills (1960s), teaching the skills of scientific inquiry (1970s), defining the habits of mind common to all the sciences (1980s), characterizing the nature of science independent of subject (1990s), or seeking insight into the culture of science (2000s), reformers across decades have unwittingly yet repeatedly reinforced a stereotypical, generic portrait of the sciences.
The latest guise is "three-dimensional learning." The 3-D approach expects teachers to frame every lesson about a core disciplinary idea (the middle D) with a scientific practice and a crosscutting concept. 3-D learning obscures the myriad ways the sciences adapt to their respective challenges. The point to learn from climate science, for example, is not simply that the earth is warming. What matters most is an understanding of how climate scientists determine the history of climate and reconcile these insights with extrapolations generated by computational renderings of the earth.
Efforts to frame all science teaching with a small number of discrete categories independent of subject have failed schools again and again. Recycling the jargon delivers very little. Reformers expect that the sharp focus of 3-D learning will enable reliable assessments.
Good luck charting student mastery of "stability and change."
And too bad every topic must lead back to the same practice and crosscutting endpoints.
NGSS boosters argue that the new standards encourage students to "interpret data, investigate patterns, create models and find explanations." Such encouragement is hardly new. Alas, the NGSS inherit the same failings as its predecessors, but with the added liability of high stakes accountability. They dissect and cross-reference, align and categorize knowledge in presumably logical and legible hierarchies. As a result, teachers and students find themselves trapped in a seemingly endless maze of alignment protocols.
The great irony is that the unifying dimensions of the NGSS defy measurement and sterilize the fertile soil the mind depends upon for growth.
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Charles Ault Jr. is professor emeritus at Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling and author of "Challenging Science Standards: A Skeptical Critique of the Quest for Unity" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).