Last Year’s Dodged Bullet Back Again, Science Standards

Last  year our Senate and House Education Committees decided against adopting the Next Generation Science Standards.  But like all bad ideas, they’re back again this year with new life.  Thursday, February 1 and Friday,  February 2  the House Education Committee will hear from the State Department of Education regarding these national science standards.

 

A great deal has already been written about them, so rather than reinventing the wheel I’m going to provide links to several  resources regarding how poor these standards are and some of the weird tricks the SBOE seems to be pulling to get these passed.

 

The first is NGSS Talking Points,   a list of what is wrong with the new standards by Jennifer Helms, PhD, RN from Arkansans for Education Freedom.

For those wanting something a little more in depth, Junk Science Comes to School is an excellent whitepaper about the Next Generation Science Standards, by Jennifer Helms and Jim Nations. (Worth the time to read.)

 

Christel Swasey has a couple of Recent posts on her education blog about why Utah shouldn’t adopt these standards.  Because they are the same standards Idaho is looking at her reasons are worth looking at.

 

Please go read the whole article.  It’s worth your time.

Update on Common Science Standards in Utah

This post is interesting because it talks about an MOU for sharing and assessment bank with several other States.  Idaho is one of those states.  (Once again, where is the local control?)

 

Trekkie Standards for Science – The Standards

This post is over two-years old, but the information in it is still relevant.

 

And last but not least, from our own Mary Ollie

A teaser version:

And a longer version:

These videos explain that we are not just adopting standards, but the content to teach those standards.  This is not standard operating procedure when standards are adopted.

 

There’s a great deal of information here, and none of it has anything positive to say about the Next Generation Science Standards. Please take a few minutes to contact the members of the House Education Committee.  Tell them to vote NO. We don’t want to replace what we have with something that is less than the best.

Julie VanOrden jvanorden@house.idaho.gov

Patrick McDonald pmcdonald@house.idaho.gov

Paul Shepherd pshepherd@house.idaho.gov

Judy Boyle jboyle@house.idaho.gov

Lance Clow lclow@house.idaho.gov

Ron Mendive rmendive@house.idaho.gov

Ryan Kerby rkerby@house.idaho.gov

Don Cheatham dcheatham@house.idaho.gov

Paul Amador pamador@house.idaho.gov

Gayann DeMordaunt gdemordaunt@house.idaho.gov

Dorothy Moon dmoon@house.idaho.gov

Scott Syme ssyme@house.idaho.gov

Barbara Ehardt behardt@house.idaho.gov

Hy Kloc hkloc@house.idaho.gov

John McCrostie jmccrostie@house.idaho.gov

Sally Toone stoone@house.idaho.gov