What Are the Next Generation Science Standards?
Photo credit: Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are a set of K–12 national science education standards that set the expectation for what students should learn in science classes and how educators should teach scientific topics. Released in 2013, the NGSS are designed to ensure every student in the U.S. gets a high-quality, research-backed, and cohesive science education.
Why Were the NGSS Created?
Multiple leading education organizations collaborated to create the NGSS primarily to fill a gap. Prior to 2013, the U.S. had no nationwide standards for K–12 science education, which allowed inequities to continue across states and made it difficult for state education agencies to prepare students for a changing post-graduation reality.
The National Research Council developed a comprehensive framework in 2011, which the collaborative then transformed into the NGSS. Since the release, every state has either adopted the NGSS fully or has used the NGSS to inform its own state science education standards.
What Do the NGSS Entail?
The NGSS comprises three elements, which were originally introduced in the National Research Council’s framework:
- Science and engineering practices: The topics and practices that each grade level should emphasize in specific science modules. Second grade students, for example, should understand how to record and interpret data.
- Disciplinary core ideas: The most essential ideas that all students should learn.
- Crosscutting concepts: The skills that relate to other areas of the science standards and their influence on society and the environment.
Primarily, the NGSS outline what students should know; emphasize the fundamental skills and tools for scientific practice; and provide coherent connections with other common core standards.
What Is the Main Goal of the NGSS?
The primary goal of the NGSS is to provide a deeper, higher-quality science education that’s aligned with real-world and workforce needs. To achieve that goal, the standards emphasize:
- Experiential, hands-on learning
- Equitable, student-centered education
- Clear and assessable performance expectations
- Connections to common core education standards
- Research-based learning progressions
How Do the NGSS Connect to the Onion Foundation’s Work?
The foundation’s Environment Program focuses on three primary strategies, including expanding high-quality nature-learning programs across the state, particularly in rural areas. We promote alignment with the NGSS in nonprofit nature learning programs because it signals their educational quality and helps classroom teachers achieve their objectives, facilitating partnership between the schools and the nonprofits.
Nature learning is the perfect vehicle to bring disciplinary core ideas to life as students develop and use science and engineering practices both outside and in the classroom to achieve deeper understanding of the world around them.