Page 74 - Standards for K-12 Engineering Education

Standards for K-12 Engineering Education?

APPENDIX B 59

where I worked on completing and disseminating the Standards until 1999, when I returned to
working on the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS). At BSCS we used the standards
as the content and pedagogical foundation for curriculum materials and professional
development. So my experiences with standards have included the perspectives on policy,
program, and practice. For those interested, Angelo Collins has provided an excellent history of
the national science education standards (Collins, 1995). Also worth noting is the October 1997
issue of School Science and Mathematics, a theme issue for which my colleague, Joan Ferrini-
Mundy, and I served as guest editors.
First and foremost, the power of national standards is their potential capacity to change
the fundamental components of the education system on a scale that will make a difference.
Very few things have the capacity to change curriculum, instruction, assessment, and the
professional education of teachers. National standards are on the short list of things that could
initiate system-wide changes on a significant scale. To the degree that various agencies,
organizations, institutions, and districts embrace national standards, they have the potential to
increase coherence and unity among state frameworks, criteria for the adoption of instructional
materials, state assessments, and other resources.
Early in my work, I realized that there were several ways standards might affect the
system, for example, in the teaching of biological evolution. First, including content such as
biological evolution in national standards would affect the content in state and local science
education standards. A review by Education Week (9 November 2005) found that a majority of
states (39) included some description of evolution in their science standards.
Second, national standards can promote feedback within education systems. Using the
science education standards as a basis for the review by Education Week provided insights into
which states did not mention evolution. The review also indicated the significant variations in
the presentation of evolution, a major finding.
Here is an example of my third point, that standards can be used to define the limits of
acceptable content. When Kansas recently planned to adopt state standards that would promote
nonscientific alternatives to evolution and liberally borrowed from the Standards and National
Science Teachers Association (NSTA) publications, both organizations denied Kansas the right
to use any of their material in its new standards (Science, 4 November 2005).
Fourth, standards influence the entire educational system because they both are input and
define output. To identify and define output, we ask, “What should all students know, value, and
be able to do?” The history of education has primarily focused on inputs with the hope of
improving outputs—especially student learning. For example, we change the length of school
years, courses, textbooks, educational technologies, and teaching techniques. All such inputs are
meant to enhance learning, but they have been inconsistent, not directed toward a common
purpose, and centered on different aspects of the educational system. In other words, they have
not been coherently focused on common outcomes. The lack of coherence is clear in many
contemporary analyses of the relationships among curriculum instruction, assessment, and
professional development.
Fifth, national standards are policies for all students. By their very nature, national
standards embrace equity. In the decade since the release of the standards, many individuals
have asked me if we really meant all students. The answer is—yes. Of course, there are always
exceptions (e.g., severely developmentally disabled students) that prove the rule. But the
Standards are explicit statements of equity. While developing the Standards, we clearly
understood that many aspects of the education system would have to change to accommodate the

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