Next Generation Science Standards Draft Review

On January 11, the OCM BOCES Science Center held a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) work session for teachers, administrators, and curriculum specialists. With the January 8th release of the second draft of the Next Generation Science Standards, this session gave participants the opportunity to get together, review, and discuss the drafted standards. Forty participants  from a variety of districts explored the performance indicators, cross cutting concepts, as well as key vocabulary included within the standards. Some important goals of the work session were to familiarize teachers with the NGSS and to obtain feedback on the second draft version. An interface was created by the Science Center to collect feedback comments using focused criteria. The feedback will be shared with Achieve (the company leading the writing of the new standards) as well as NYSED.

The timeline for the Next Generation Science Standards is as follows:

• The standards opened for review at 3:00 p.m. EST on January 8, 2013.
• The review period will end on January 29, 2013.
• The standards and the survey can be accessed at www.nextgenscience.org 
• Final Release – March of 2013
• NYSED will have to decide whether to adopt the NGSS and, if adopted, make decisions concerning curriculum development, implementation and testing.