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Fox
News
New
science standards have
educational publishers turning the page
Apr 12, 2013
The
release of proposed new
national science standards, including the emphasis of manmade climate
change,
will alter the classroom landscape for millions of students in the
United
States, as well as for at least one education publisher readying for
the
"major" undertaking.
The
Next Generation Science
Standards, which were released Tuesday after development by 26 states
and
several national scientific organizations, recommend that educators for
the
first time identify climate change as a core concept and stress the
relationship between that change and human activity.
"Human
activities, such as the
release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major
factors in the
current rise in Earth's mean surface temperature (global warming),"
according to the elementary school standards, which are not federally
mandated
and will be adopted on a state-by-state basis.
The
process to implement the new
guidelines - the first time in nearly 15 years to change the science
K-12
education nationwide - could take years in some cases, but some of the
nation's
major education publishers have already taken notice.
Kelly
McGrath, a science editor at
Pearson, one of the so-called "big three" education publishers
alongside McGraw-Hill Education and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said its
materials will need revision to "reflect the depth of coverage" in
the new guidelines.
"With
the implementation of
the Next Generation Science Standards, we will need to revise our
coverage of
climate change and many other science core ideas, to reflect the depth
of
coverage in the new standards and the shift to focus on scientific
practices," McGrath wrote in an email to FoxNews.com. "In a digital
learning environment, we'll have greater capacity to deliver materials
that
meet the news standards, and teachers and students will benefit from
the
personalization capabilities that digital provides."
For
example, one of the new middle
school science standards recommends that teacher ask questions to
"clarify
evidence" of the factors that have caused the rise in global
temperatures
throughout the past century…
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the rest of the article at Fox
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