This week, The Art of Teaching Science will publish its third eBook on science education topics based on blog posts at this site.  The new eBook is entitled Achieving a New Generation of Common Science Standards.  The eBook will be published tomorrow, and will be free to all who visit this blog.

The following text is from the Preface of the new eBook.

Why is it that the perception of science education in the U.S. (and other countries as well) is
driven by rankings of students on international test score comparisons? The perception is that
U.S. students are not competitive in the global market place, and critics use the results on international tests to support their position.

At the same time, there has been a movement to create a common core curriculum in the United States, and to use these standards to develop national assessments to test the performance of students, and use these achievement results to evaluate the performance of teachers, administrators and schools.  Under the rubric of the Common Core State Standards, a single organization is developing the standards that will be used in the states as the basis for their curriculum.  Thus far, common standards have been developed in mathematics, and reading/language arts.

Based on The Framework for K-12 Science Education published by the National Research Council, a new generation of science standards is under development and will be published next year.  The new science standards will become part of the trend of common core standards, and it is expected that new science assessments will follow.

Twenty states will collaborate with Achieve, a standards writing organization that uses donated funds from large corporations and foundations to carry out its tasks. There is a lot of excitement, especially for the twenty state departments of education that will be selected to participate.

These two trends, comparing U.S. students’ test scores to students in other countries, and the race
to develop common core standards, followed by common academic assessments are dominant forces affecting education in 2011.

In this eBook, we will explore these trends by presenting posts on these topics:

• The Race to the Top
• Frameworks and Standards
• Using Tests to Assess Performance
• Reform

Questions will be raised about why common standards, and misconceptions surrounding the use of international and high-stakes tests continue to be connected with the reform education in the United
States.

We will look at the Framework for K-12 Science Education, and discuss some of the issues
surrounding the underlying purpose of using common standards in American schools.  We will also examine the results of international tests such as PISA and TIMSS and question the interpretation of critics that these results show that the “sky is falling” or that we have on our hands another “Sputnik moment.”

Finally, in a letter to the President, I integrate the President’s personal views of education with the humanistic science paradigm as a way to reform education.