In a report that Florida Commissioner of Education Gerard Robinson will be presenting (pdf document) to the Florida Board of Education this week, he recommends temporarily patching up our state’s wounded science standards and then adopting the National Next Generation Science Standards in 2013-2014. In his own words:
To address the weaknesses identified in the Fordham Foundation’s State of State Science Standards 2012 report, it is recommended that Florida incorporate components of high rated State standards through the addition of clarification statements, remarks and examples. These additions will add clarity and specificity as to the instructional intent of the benchmarks. Clarification statements, remarks and examples will be identified from State science frameworks that have received an “A†rating by the Fordham Foundation such as the California, District of Columbia, Indiana, Massachusetts, and/ or South Carolina as recommended by Finn and Porter-Magee.
…
Recommended Next Steps:
1. Improve weaknesses identified by Fordham in Florida’s current science standards in the areas of chemistry and physics.
2. Thoroughly review and analyze the National Next Generation Science Standards draft as they are released, including submission of Florida comment as in the public comment review process, and prepare for adoption as part of our legislatively authorized standards adoption process in 2013-2014.
Unfortunately, Florida won’t have significant input into the development of the Next Generation Standards since our Department of Education has so far declined to join with the other 26 states that are doing the actual work of creating them. There’s nothing we can do about that now. Florida can make comments at some point in the near future just as any other person can when a draft is released for public input. At least the Commissioner is giving his thumbs up to the Next Generation Standards effort overall. But now it will be up to the Board of Education to approve his recommendation at the May 9 meeting. If you want to put a bug in the Board Members’ ears about this, then do it soon.
