I learned at a meeting last week that the release of the first draft of the “Next Generation Science Standards” – the new national science standards being developed by Achieve on the basis of the NRC’s K-12 Science Framework – will be released in the next few weeks.
It seems likely that the standards will be available for adoption by mid-2013.
The next meeting of the Florida Board of Education is on May 9 – probably shortly after the release of the first draft. The release will give the Board an opportunity/excuse to abandon the plan to modify the existing Florida standards that was discussed at the last Board meeting and simply state its tentative intention to adopt the national standards when they become available. Fiddling with the present flawed standards doesn’t make any sense.
In fact, a young colleague from another institution who is a star in the physics education field made an excellent suggestion – that if the Florida Board of Education insists on fiddling with the existing standards, they should simply paste the draft Next Generation standards (the ones being released next week) in for the time being. Then at least the transition to the final national standards will be smooth next year.
But the best option of all is simply to do nothing – and to wait for the final national standards to be released next year.
Bridge to Tomorrow 