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Large numbers of U.S. students lack proficiency in science, and students from different ethnic and socioeconomic groups show disparities in science achievement. Science knowledge and skills are important for both academic and workplace success, and a variety of interventions have been developed to improve student achievement in science. The "Full Option Science System™" (FOSS) is a science curriculum for students in kindergarten to grade 8 with content in physical science, earth science, and life science. The curriculum consists of a series of 8- to 9-week modules in kindergarten to grade 5, and 9- or 18-week courses in grades 6 to 8. This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) report, part of the WWC's Primary Science topic area, examines research on the effects of FOSS on science achievement for students in kindergarten through grade 8. No studies of FOSS that fall within the scope of the Primary Science review protocol meet WWC standards. Because no studies meet WWC standards, the WWC is unable to draw any conclusions at this time about the effectiveness of FOSS on science achievement.

With states weighing whether to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), this analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute compares the existing science standards of thirty-eight states with the NGSS and with exemplary standards from three other states. The K-12 science standards were compared for states whose expectations were either "too close to call" or "clearly inferior to" those of the NGSS with the expectations set by three of the top-performing states, as well as with the Next Generation Science Standards themselves. Comparisons are presented side-by-side in the form of brief descriptions of the quality of the standards, including salient strengths and weaknesses. Five areas are covered: (1) treatment of scientific inquiry and practices; (2) physical science (including physics and chemistry); (3) life science; (4) earth and space science; and (5) clarity and specificity. [Introduction by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee.]

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute monitored the evolution of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) through two public drafts, on both of which reviewers provided extensive feedback and recommendations for improvement. This third Fordham Review of the (NGSS) is the product of a nine member team that includes practicing scientists and mathematicians, a distinguished engineer, and an historian/philosopher of science. All are experienced teachers of science and/or mathematics. The final NGSS standards incorporate a number of changes from earlier drafts. Reviewers identify and discuss them, recognizing changes that they find laudable (such as the new, introductory, grade-level "storylines") as well as those they find disquieting (primarily a further reduction of substantive science content). Then, using substantially the same criteria and scoring metrics as were applied earlier to reviews of state science standards, they grade the NGSS. The purpose here--and in state-specific comparisons that will follow--is to provide for state-level officials and science educators useful information as they consider adopting the NGSS and/or otherwise strengthening the science standards that are in poor repair in so many places. [This review was written with Douglas Buttrey, Ursula Goodenough, Noretta Koertge, Lawrence Lerner, Martha Schwartz, and Richard Schwartz. Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee. For "Commentary & Feedback on Draft 1 of the Next Generation Science Standards", see ED598747. For Draft II, see ED598748. For a related report, see ED524696. The General Electric Foundation provided additional support for this review.]

When validating assessment models built with data mining, generalization is typically tested at the student-level, where models are tested on new students. This approach, though, may fail to find cases where model performance suffers if other aspects of those cases relevant to prediction are not well represented. We explore this here by testing if scientific inquiry skill models built and validated for one science topic can predict skill demonstration for new students and a new science topic. Test cases were chosen using two methods: student-level stratification, and stratification based on the amount of trials ran during students' experimentation. We found that predictive performance of the models was different on each test set, revealing limitations that would have been missed from student-level validation alone.

No one is satisfied with science education in the U.S. today. One need only look at Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data to see what a mediocre job is being done of imparting a solid science education to the average American student. There are multiple reasons for this failure, not least the poor preparation of too many teachers whose job it is to teach this critical subject. One key explanation is the poor quality of academic expectations and standards themselves. In science--perhaps even more than other subjects--states must honor their responsibility to set forth, explicitly and rigorously, the skills and content that schools are expected to impart and students are expected to learn at every grade level. Such standards need to be clear, meaty, challenging, well prioritized, and--perhaps most importantly--teachable. These are, the expectations that should be used by practitioners to inform curriculum, textbook, and teacher preparation, that become the basis for state and local assessments, and that inform--or should inform--classroom-level planning and instruction. Done right, state K-12 science expectations set a firm foundation upon which the rest of science education across the state will be constructed. Particularly for teachers who may lack the content-specific expertise themselves, state standards will direct their planning, inform their instruction, and set a clear bar for student content mastery at each grade level. Because getting this right is vital, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has been reviewing state science standards since 1998. In the most recent review, published just a year ago, expert reviewers determined that the clarity, content, and rigor of most state K-12 science standards was mediocre to awful. They assigned grades of C or worse to three quarters of the states. While the first draft of the the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that was reviewed by Fordham experts found that much was promising. The commentary by the reviewers of the first draft determined that "the NGSS authors have much to do to ensure that the final draft is a true leap forward in science education." This second review and commentary report asks the following question: To what extent has NGSS draft 2.0 rectified the shortcomings scrutinized by the first review, and are we significantly closer to a set of K-12 science standards that even states with strong standards of their own would do well to adopt? The conclusion of the review of NGSS 2.0 is that if draft 2.0 were to become the final version of NGSS, only states with exceptionally weak science standards of their own would likely benefit from replacing them with these "next-generation" standards. This report urges NGSS drafters and overseers to take as much time as necessary to make the final version come out right. Reviewers stated that the present draft is problematic in more ways than it is strong. [This report was written with Douglas Buttrey, Ursula Goodenough, Noretta Koertge, Lawrence S. Lerner, Martha Schwartz, and Richard Schwartz. Math Feedback was provided by William Schmidt and W. Stephen Wilson. Foreword was written by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee. Funding for this review is from the General Electric Foundation. For Draft I of the Next Generation Science Standards, see ED598747. For the related 2011 review, see ED524696.]

We present work toward automatically assessing and estimating science inquiry skills as middle school students engage in inquiry within a physical science microworld. Towards accomplishing this goal, we generated machine-learned models that can detect when students test their articulated hypotheses, design controlled experiments, and engage in planning behaviors using two inquiry support tools. Models were trained using labels generated through a new method of manually hand-coding log files, "text replay tagging". This approach led to detectors that can automatically and accurately identify these inquiry skills under student-level cross-validation. The resulting detectors can be applied at run-time to drive scaffolding intervention. They can also be leveraged to automatically score all practice attempts, rather than hand-classifying them, and build models of latent skill proficiency. As part of this work, we also compared two approaches for doing so, Bayesian Knowledge-Tracing and an averaging approach that assumes static inquiry skill level. These approaches were compared on their efficacy at predicting skill before a student engages in an inquiry activity, predicting performance on a paper-style multiple choice test of inquiry, and predicting performance on a transfer task requiring data collection skills. Overall, we found that both approaches were effective at estimating student skills within the environment. Additionally, the models' skill estimates were significant predictors of the two types of inquiry transfer tests. [This paper was published in "User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction" v23 p1-39 2013.]

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has released "What Will They Learn? 2012-13," the fourth edition, evaluating the general education requirements at 1,070 colleges and universities. Unlike other college rankings, ACTA does not consider an institution's wealth, prestige, or popularity. Rather, ACTA rates institutions on what core of courses all students in a school's B.A. and B.S. degree programs are required to take. The report and the companion website, WhatWillTheyLearn.com, detail whether each school requires literature, U.S. government or history, foreign language, mathematics, economics, science, and composition. ACTA assigns each school a letter grade, and notes explain the grades assigned and noteworthy programs within schools. "What Will They Learn?" strives to answer the first question that parents, guidance counselors, and trustees should ask about high school graduates going to college: what will they learn?

In May, Achieve unveiled and solicited comments on the first draft of the Next Generation Science Standards, the product of months of work by a team of writers on behalf of twenty-six states. This review by Fordham provides commentary, feedback, and constructive advice. The following four suggestions are offered by Fordham reviewers for those who will be revising this draft: (1) Rewrite every standard to eliminate the "Practices" statements where they are empty, distracting, or not seriously assessable. Use Practices statements only when they have real content, and be clear in the text on how they are to be accomplished by the student "and how such accomplishment is to be assessed"; (2) Bring into the revision process a few "independent", highly qualified scientists, i.e., individuals not previously involved with the drafting process, to check every standard in their special disciplines for errors and ambiguities (including assessment challenges), and to recommend corrections for any that they find; (3) For the indispensable parts of natural science that are mathematical and require the use of mathematics, get one or more consultants who are well-versed in "both the science and its component mathematics", and who also know the CCSS-M, to revise the relevant standards so that they are properly aligned; and (4) Put the next version of the standards themselves (with clarifications and other explanations as needed) into a single, clear, fully searchable document that can be read and used by state and district science specialists and by classroom teachers. Reviewers found the intricately interlocked web pages that were navigated (again and unfortunately, no longer online) are, in their way, beautiful. They noted that they may be appropriate accompaniments to a new standards release. But they do not lend themselves to application in the critical, final stages of curriculum design and classroom instruction at the district and school levels. The science basics in the underlying NRC Framework were sound, as is a good deal of the science evident in this first draft of NGSS. The reviewers concluded that careful revision, with close attention to necessary but missing science, with elimination of content gaps and correction of mostly minor errors, with meticulous alignment to CCSS-M, and with honest expansion of the well-intended but unworkable "omnibus" standards, can yield a quality product, at least as good as the far-too-few outstanding versions that individual states have produced on their own. [This review was written with Lawrence S. Lerner, John Lynch, Martha Schwartz, Richard Schwartz, and W. Stephen Wilson. Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee. For the 2011 review, see ED524696.]

"Technology Enhanced Elementary and Middle School Science" ("TEEMSS") is a physical science curriculum for grades 3-8 that utilizes computers, sensors, and interactive models to support investigations of real-world phenomena. Through 15 inquiry-based instructional units, students interact with computers, gather and analyze data, and formulate ideas for further exploration. This information is managed by software in a handheld computer and transmitted to other students and to the teacher. All classroom units use handheld computers to avoid the expense of networked desktop computers. The program includes a web-based teacher-reporting tool that allows teachers to review student portfolios and gather student responses for assessment and class discussion. Three studies reviewed by the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) investigated the effects of "TEEMSS" on elementary school students. One study (Zucker, Tinker, Staudt, Mansfield, & Metcalf, 2008) is a quasi-experimental design that meets WWC evidence standards with reservations. This study is summarized in this report. The remaining two studies do not meet either WWC eligibility screens or evidence standards. Appended are: (1) Research details for Zucker et al. (2008); (2) Outcome measures for each domain; and (3) Findings included in the rating for the general science achievement domain. A glossary of terms is included. (Contains 4 tables, 8 endnotes and 1 additional source.)

In this paper we explored whether engaging in two inquiry skills associated with data collection, designing controlled experiments and testing stated hypotheses, within microworlds for one physical science domain (density) impacted the acquisition of inquiry skills in another domain (phase change). To do so, we leveraged educational data mining techniques to both assess and estimate students' inquiry skills across domains. Analyses revealed that honing these skills in density activities provided benefits in terms of transfer and skill acquisition. More specifically, students who practiced in density activities first were more likely to show mastery of the designing controlled experiments skill than those who had no prior practice. These same students were also more likely to test their stated hypotheses during their first data collection in phase change. Thus, practice in one domain can positively impact acquisition and transfer of skill in a second domain, suggesting that inquiry skills also have a degree of domain generality.

This report examines K-12 science standards for fifty states and the District of Columbia, as well as the science assessment framework of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The reviewers' aim is to evaluate them for their intrinsic clarity, completeness, and scientific correctness. Their earlier evaluations, as well as those evaluations conducted by others, have made it clear that too many state science standards are mediocre to poor. In particular, there are four areas where they most frequently fail to measure up. These are: (1) An Undermining of Evolution; (2) A Propensity to be Vague; (3) Poor Integration of Scientific Inquiry; and (4) Where Did All the Numbers Go? Appended are: (1) Methods, Criteria, and Grading Metric; and (2) Detailed Grades, 2012. (Contains 17 footnotes and 1 table.) [Foreword by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee.]

Engineering has gained considerable traction in many K-12 schools. However, there are several obstacles or challenges to an effective approach that leads to student learning. Questions such as where engineering best fits in the curriculum; how to include it authentically and appropriately; toward what educational end; and how best to prepare teachers need to be answered. Integration or infusion appears to be the most viable approach; instead of stand-alone engineering courses squeezing into the already crammed curriculum. An integrative approach whereby engineering is infused into the existing curriculum, within science, technology, mathematics or other courses, appears to be the best approach to expose students to engineering learning. However, little is yet known about how best to infuse engineering concepts into the K-12 curriculum. What does it mean to infuse engineering concepts into high school instruction? This question raises significant issues that need to be addressed in order to integrate appropriate engineering concepts and accomplish important learning outcomes. In order to explore this larger question, an expert focus group meeting was convened to inform the development of a model or descriptions for infusing engineering concepts into high school instruction and to address some of the pertinent questions involved. The focus group meeting is an important input toward a larger project, in which the researcher is a co-Principal Investigator. The Infuse Project was funded by the National Science Foundation to research teacher learning through an innovative approach to professional development that is engineering concept-driven. The project is focused on the infusion of engineering concepts into life science and physical science education. The present study, which is the subject of this report, addressed issues that needed clarification in order to inform the development of the protocol to be used in the major investigations of Project Infuse. (Contains 1 table and 2 footnotes.)

The hypothetical learning progressions presented here are the products of the deliberations of two working groups of science education researchers, each group also including a state science curriculum supervisor, organized by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), with support from the National Science Foundation. Their charge was to produce hypothetical learning progressions describing the pathways students might be expected to follow as they acquire deep understanding of two of the core learning goals set by the National Research Council's (NRC) Committee on a Conceptual Framework for the New K-12 Science Education Standards. The goals in question address students' understanding of the structure, properties, and transformations of matter in the physical sciences and of the flow of matter and energy in ecosystems in the life sciences. These two core goals were chosen because a good bit of research has been done on children's learning in these areas, some of it carried out by members of the working groups. These hypothetical learning progressions are intended to inform those who are working on the new national science standards, to serve as tools for those charged with developing curriculum and assessments to implement the new standards, and to encourage others to undertake the theoretical and empirical work needed to fill important gaps in the knowledge about learning progressions. At the end of July 2011 the NRC's Framework Committee released its report, A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas (NRC, 2012). The Framework was the first step in a two-step process to produce a new set of science standards for voluntary adoption by states. The second step--the development of a set of standards based on this framework--is being led by Achieve Inc., working in collaboration with the states and offering opportunities for input from science educators and the public. Accordingly, the Framework is a parsimonious description of what every student should know and understand by the end of high school in order to be scientifically literate, able to function as a responsible citizen and participant in the modern economy, and able to pursue further learning as his or her career and life interests might require. The Framework identifies core ideas in four key disciplinary areas--physical sciences, life sciences, earth and space sciences, and engineering, technology, and the application of science-along with cross-cutting concepts that unify the study of science and engineering through their common application across fields and the scientific and engineering "practices" that are central to the ways in which knowledge in these fields is produced, tested, and used. However, the committee's report makes it clear that they consider the evidence base for their recommendations--particularly those that concern how students learn the core ideas and practices of science and how to support that learning--to be incomplete. In the final chapter they outline an agenda for research and development that would over time result in a firmer basis for setting standards and designing supportive curricula, assessments, and professional development. Appended are: (1) Consultants Working on Hypothetical Learning Progressions; (2) List of science practices and design principles to use in developing hypothetical learning performances; (3) Relationship Between NRC Framework and Learning Progression for Structure, Properties & Transformation of Matter; and (4) Relationship Between NRC Framework and Learning Progression for the Flow of Matter & Energy in Ecosystems. Individual sections contain references. (Contains 2 figures and 3 footnotes.) [This paper was prepared with Charles Anderson, Jacob Foster, Fred Goldberg, Jennifer Hicks, David Kanter, Joseph Krajcik, Richard Lehrer, Brian Reiser, and Marianne Wiser.]

Present large-scale assessments require the use of item formats, such as multiple choice, that can be administered and scored efficiently. This limits competencies that can be measured by these assessments. An alternative approach to large-scale assessments is being investigated that would include the use of complex performance assessments. As part of this research, a set of essential middle-school science competencies that go unassessed by large-scale assessments was identified, based on Florida's current Sunshine State Standards. Each competency then becomes a starting point to establish observable evidence that is appropriate for determining competence and, in turn, tasks students can be asked to perform that are consistent with the needed evidence. Competencies are grouped within categories--Nature of Science, Earth and Space Science, Physical Science, and Life Science--that correspond to the four disciplinary areas used, for instance, in formulating the Common Core State Standards in science. The present paper lists and also describes the process used to identify these unassessed competencies. [Contains 1 footnote. This paper was prepared by the Center for Advancement of Learning and Assessment, Florida State University.]

The National frameworks for science emphasize inquiry skills (NRC, 1996), however, in typical classroom practice, science learning often focuses on rote learning in part because science process skills are difficult to assess (Fadel, Honey, & Pasnick, 2007) and rote knowledge is prioritized on high-stakes tests. Short answer assessments of inquiry have been used (cf., Alonzo & Aschbacher, 2004; Songer, 2006), however, these tend to not align well to current national frameworks (Quellmalz, Kreikemeier, DeBarger, & Haertel, 2007) and it is unclear whether they properly identify inquiry skills (Black, 1999; Pellegrino, 2001). Hands-on performance assessments are more authentic (Baxter and Shavelson 1994; Ruiz-Primo & Shavelson, 1996), however, these are seldom used in schools because of difficulty with reliable administration and the resulting high cost. The Science Assistments project (www.scienceassistments.org) has developed a rigorous, technology-based learning environment that assists and assesses hence, "assistments") middle school students in Earth, Life, and Physical Science so that teachers can assess their students' skills rigorously, frequently, and during instruction--in the context in which they are developing (Mislevy et al, 2002). The authors' program of work represents a significant advance over other programs that utilize pencil and paper assessments because theirs makes use of a state-of-the art logging infrastructure to do web-based tutoring (Razzaq et al, 2005). As a proof of concept for automated assessment of scientific inquiry skills, the authors used model-tracing (Corbett & Anderson, 1995; Koedinger & Corbett, 2006) to develop a cognitive model of science inquiry skills, particularly, the control for variables strategy (Chen & Klahr, 1999) and warranting claims with data. This model provides a rich qualitative, process-oriented scoring of students' inquiry "moves" within a guided scientific inquiry simulation for the domain of state change. They address the validity of this automated approach to performance assessment both quantitatively, in terms of reliability and predictive validity, and qualitatively, in terms of providing rich traces of student inquiry steps and "mis-steps" or haphazard inquiry (Buckley, Gobert et al, 2010). Participants were 78 eighth grade students, ranging in age from 12-14 years, from a public middle school in Central Massachusetts. In this paper the authors have shown that they can use model-tracing as a method of performance assessment for science inquiry skills, an ill-defined domain. This builds upon the extensive work that has been done to date for well-defined domains such as math (Corbett & Anderson, 1995; Koedinger & Corbett, 2006). Additionally: (1) the reliability of their machine-scored measures of inquiry are highly consistent across the 4 Assistment activities or "trials", suggesting that they can reliably capture students' inquiry performance on these rich inquiry tasks, and (2) their measures are moderately correlated with post-test measures of inquiry performance for analogous concepts. Lastly, their data show that model-tracing can detect interesting patterns of student inquiry such as confirmation bias and overcoming confirmation basis. These are important data with respect to demonstrating auto-scoring of rich inquiry behaviors, but are also important, particularly the former, in terms of its implications for adaptive scaffolding of student inquiry, such as that being done by the Science Assistments group (www.scienceassistments.org; Gobert et al, 2007, 2009). This work makes contribution to theoretical understanding of scientific inquiry, to its assessment, and to technical methods to auto-score inquiry. This represents an advance in this area since to date there has been difficulty in separating inquiry from the domain-specific context in which it was learned (Mislevy et al., 2002; Gobert, Pallant, & Daniels, 2010), and difficulty measuring inquiry skills due to their complexity and the amount of data required for reliable measurement (Shavelson et al, 1999). (Contains 1 table.)

This publication presents the Nebraska Science Standards for Grades K-12. The standards are presented according to the following grades: (1) Grades K-2; (2) Grades 3-5; (3) Grades 6-8; and (4) Grades 9-12.

The success of all students, including students with disabilities, on statewide assessments in mathematics and reading/English language arts has been examined closely. This is due, in part, to the role of these content areas in school accountability for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) known as "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). States also were expected to establish science content standards by 2005-2006, and to develop assessments in science by 2007-2008. The purpose of this report is to document the inclusion of students with disabilities in science assessments in 2006-2007, during the period just before the required implementation of statewide science assessments. The authors examined the status of science assessments for students with disabilities in the 50 regular states during 2006-2007 by reviewing publicly-available documents describing three aspects of existing science assessments: (a) the general nature of science assessments, including the content assessed, test and item specifications, and response formats; (b) accommodations policies, including which states had policies; and (c) the participation and performance of students with disabilities on science assessments, based on public reports of these data. Three primary fields of scientific study were covered by most states at all three school levels (elementary, middle, and high school): Earth science, life science, and physical science. States varied in the degree of detail provided about the content of their science assessments, from simply general scientific field categories, to subcategories of material within a field, to actual knowledge and skills statements. The formats for students to give responses to the test items included selected responses, constructed responses, and performance-based responses. Across the three school levels, the most common response format configuration on tests required both selected and constructed responses. However, many states' assessments required only selected responses, commonly multiple choice. Relatively few states' science tests required a combination of selected, constructed, and performance responses. Accommodations policies for science tests were similar. Nearly all states allowed for their science assessments accommodations such as large print, braille, reading aloud of questions, magnification equipment, amplification equipment, proctor/scribe, taking breaks during the assessment, and taking the assessment individually or in small groups. Accommodations that very few states allowed for their science assessments included: presenting instructions and test questions via overhead projector; paraphrasing stimulus material, test items, or answer choices; audiotape/CD recording of items; and use of a thesaurus. Data on the participation and performance of students with disabilities on science assessments varied considerably in detail. Fewer than 10 states reported participation rates at the elementary, middle school, and high school level. They showed participation rates that were, on average, above 95% of students with disabilities, but less often so at the high school level. Performance also varied considerably, partly as a function of grade. A majority of the scores of students with disabilities did not reach the proficient level. The number of states in which most students with disabilities reached proficiency was largest at the elementary level and smallest at the high school level. Appendices include: (1) Content Information; (2) Accommodations Information; and (3) Science Assessment Participation and Performance Data. (Contains 20 tables and 8 figures.)

This study estimates the extent of relationship between "Achievement in Physical Science" and "Classroom Climate" for the total sample and Sub sample based on gender. The tools used for collecting the data are scale of classroom climate and achievement test in physical science. The study reveals that boys show indifferent or negligible but significant correlation between "Achievement in Physical Science" and "classroom climate" but for girls the relationship was found to be insignificant. The study also shows that less than one percent of the variance of Achievement in Physical Science for total sample is to be attributed to "classroom climate."