Massachusetts Science Standards Update

Former NSSSA President, David Lyons and retired NSSSA member, John Papadonis attended both the recent STEM Summit in Worcester and a Science Standards Colloquium hosted by Cambridge College at the Museum of Science. There they took in a presentation by DESE's Assistant Director of STEM, Jacob Foster, whose presentation slides have been shared below. In addition, David Lyons has been kind enough to share his notes from this presentation and our fall meetings roundtable discussion on the revised science standards.

Timeline:

• Expected ratification Fall 2015
• MCAS change 2-3 years after ratification, but high school may take longer (due to competency determination).

The Big Picture:

• 32% of currently advertised jobs in Massachusetts are for STEM fields.
• 60% of jobs that pay more than 60 thousand/year are in STEM.

We need to begin now to prepare students for these future jobs! Rather than focusing on the specifics of a Biology course, Career and College readiness means having students not only learn, but use relevant science and engineering practices, relevant scientific reasoning and relevant math.

Scientists and engineers basically use the same skills (with only their purpose and product being different). In the new standards content and practice are now integrated, which, hopefully, will lead to greater interest.

We need to address student misperceptions at all grade levels. All students are taught about photosynthesis, but do they actually know how a tree becomes a tree? We don't simply want students to know facts, our goal is for students to be able to interpret and explain the natural world.

The Implications 

1. Relevance-there is a shift from learning facts to explaining phenomena
2. Rigor- standards include practice with content, inquiry-based practices
3. Coherence- learning builds across time and across disciplines

One paradigm shift is to student directed learning. We want our students to be able to argue from evidence. To quote Scott Morrison, "seeing is not doing, participation is not ownership!"

Engineering is not just a simple application of science (old standards). For engineering practices we want our students to Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, and Improve (just like in the real world).

Specifics:

• New standards articulate desired student performance.
• New standards do not define how you teach. 
• New standards feature a change in the verbs (moving away from Bloom's) 
• New standards will be linked over time, connected, with increasing sophistication.

Old standards: (relative to photosynthesis) paraphrased, and compared to the new.

Grade band 3-5: Describe how energy from the Sun.....
Grade band 6-8: Recognize that producers.......
High School: Identify the reactants, products and purposes.........

New standards: 

Grade 5: Support an argument that plants......... 
Middle School: Develop a model to describe........
High School: Use a model to illustrate how photosynthesis......

• Pre k-8 will now be grade specific (unlike prior bands) 
• Pre k-5 practically mirror Next Generation standards, so Jake explained that aligned resources should be much easier to find.

Jake advised not to keep both sets of standards, but to start using Next Gen now (pre k-5).

Districts are encouraged to have integrated curriculum, but they will not be mandated to do it. Middle school should be spiral, as this is the format of the new standards (but not mandated).

Middle school decisions to be made:

• Do you spiral or continue the layer cake (Earth/Space-Life-Physical)?
• How do you handle content-specific teachers? 

Assessment: 

The schedule of MCAS exams is not expected to change (no grade to grade test). There will probably be a different look to the test because the present test does not assess practice.
DESE will be watching the PARCC to gauge how the science tests will change because to conform to the new standards there needs to be a performance assessment.
The high school standards are for introductory 9th and 10th grade courses.

Every district determines their own pathway. There is an overall reduction in the scope of high school standards. High school standards feature an overlap in STEM and ELA standards.