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Cold War impact
The Cold War efforts required large numbers of highly trained scientists, and there was worry over whether there would be enough qualifiedhigh-school graduates to fill the need -
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Federal funds were made available to school districts for the construction of science teaching laboratories. This was to enable students to learn via inquiry based activities. -
K-12 science curriculum development projects
the creation of "Physical Science Study Committee, ChemStudy, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, and the Earth Science Curriculum Study (Duschl, 1990). Under the leadership of natural scientists working in collaboration with psychologists, these curricula aimed to provide students with early exposure to “authentic” science." -
Science in Schools
60 percent of U.S. school districts reported using one or another of the NSF-sponsored science curricula (Rudolph, 2002). It was hard to get this number beyond 60 percent because of curriculum costs. Many teachers still taught science with text books rather than inquiry activities -
A Nation at Risk
in the 1980s policy makers and the scientific community worried that American students were falling behind Japan and the Pacific Rim nations. The put forth an effort to raise the bar for graduation requirements in math and science. The National Commission for Excellence in Education urged school systems to create a minimum requirement of three years each of science and mathematics for high school graduation and “more rigorous and measurable standards.” -
Science Standards in School
Reformers worked to get standards passed at each layer of education; each layer having a bit more say in what was taught (to avoid the controversy of centralized education policy)."In science these were Benchmarks for Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993) and The National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996). These two documents served as guiding frameworks for the development or refinement of each state’s own science frameworks..." -
New outlook in standard practices
The outcome of having the universal science benchmarks show that "instructional improvement could be accomplished through system-wide efforts and that many actors—including teachers, students, parents, administrators, and professional development staffs—were implicated in reform". This is the start of truly standardized education in the US (early 2000s). -
NCLB
No Child Left Behind stated that all schools must repots testing and demographic information. Science was not not reported until 2007. -
statistics
"High-income students consistently outperform low-income students, and the gap in average performance appears to be widening (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000, 2003)" -
Next Generation Standards
Scientists and Science Educators came up with a K12 framework that will outline what students need to learn as well as how it is supposed to be taught. These standards represent what students need to be science literate members of society. -
New approach to science education
Today, the science and education community want to take a new look at how science is taught. "The historical patterns of inequity in science are no longer tolerable". How can we engage minority and low income students with relevant science education methods?