California Science Framework / California Science Standards / Science Materials Adoption Criteria

News, Commentary, Updates

Resources

• California EE Plan: Education and the Environment: Strategic Initiatives for Enhancing Education in California Available for purchase from the CDE bookstore: http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/pn/rc/ap/pubdisplay.aspx?ID=001571

• California Science Frameworks, available for purchase or free download from the California Department of Education website

• California Science Standards or download as pdf here

• Meeting Standards Naturally - A new FREE CD-ROM entitled "Meeting Standards Naturally" has been developed for K-12 educators to promote academic excellence and environmental literacy. This was developed by the Environmental Education and Training Partnership (EETAP) which is funded by the U.S. EPA's Office of Environmental Education. The CD-ROM explores how teaching about the environment can be used to achieve national education standards for core disciplines such as math, science and social studies. The CD-ROM also discusses what environmental literacy means and how it helps prepare students to effectively make environmental decisions that impact their daily lives.
  
  The 'Meeting Standards Naturally CD discusses what "environmental literacy" means; shows how using the environment as a context for learning can promote academic achievement and help educators meet national and state education standards; and provides 43 sample K-12 curriculum activities that demonstrate how environmental lessons can support specific grade level education standards.
  
  The CD-ROM is packaged with "Advancing Education through Environmental Literacy," a new publication developed by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ACSD) in collaboration with EETAP. The new publication focuses on how education and the environment can be linked to advance student learning. Included are descriptions of schools successfully implementing environmental education programs and summaries of research documenting how schools have raised test scores of their students by using the environment to help teach content in subject areas such as social studies, science, reading, and math.
  
  Go to the EETAP website to order or download the FREE CD ROM, or view the CD ROM online here.

Hands-On Issue

• Update! Because of comments, hands-on instruction in the newly adopted (3/11/04) materials selections criteria has been changed to a minimum of 25% hands-on instruction ! See this article
• The adoption criteria that were approved by the State Board on March 10th, 2004 are now posted on the web. The document can be accessed at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/sc/cf/documents/scicriteria04.pdf .
• California Science Framework Issues: The newly adopted California Science Framework includes wording that limits science instruction to "no more than 25% hands-on instruction." If this seems crazy to you, read on. Imagine a college science class that was only 1/4 lab! most have 3 hours of lecture and 6-9 hours of lab! Imagine 9 hours of lecture and 3 hours of lab... Ugh! That is what they are asking science teachers to do, in effect. This backward policy has garnered some national attention - read an article in the Washington Post about the 25% hands-on limitation. If you are interested in writing the department of education about this, see this page for more information. See below for more critiques on the Framework from before it was adopted. AEOE was active in trying to get environmental education included in the framework, in increasing hands-on instruction, but we were unsuccessful.
• The issue of Concern: a proposed limit to hands-on science instruction (in science textbooks/curricula)
• Who to make comments to about the Science Materials Adoption Criteria
• Washington Post Article: Back to Basics vs. Hands-On
• Update: Adoption Criteria approved, March 11, 2004 - because of comments received, now reads minimum of 25% hands-on instruction!

Science Framework / Science Standards

• AEOE's position on the Proposed California Science Framework, available for review until Feb 15, 2003 (no longer applicable - past deadline)
• Adopted Science Framework available for purchase or download from the CDE website
• Science Standards on the web

• Science Framework - now in its final form, but these articles are on here for reference.
Adopted California State Science Framework and Standards are available now as downloads from http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/pn/fd/sci-frame-dwnld.asp

• Draft Science Framework - Comments are needed to enhance the role of environmental education in the Draft Science Framework
• Key Points by Michael Charnofsky and Kathleen Mitchell
• Highlights and Review from the Perspective of Outdoor Science Schools and Environmental Education by Kathleen Mitchell
• Field Review by Celeste Royer

NOTE: the California Department of Education recently completely revised their website, and many links are no longer to be found. I'm trying to get them all updated, but can't find any trace of some formerly useful pages - thanks for your patience. - AEOE Webmaster