So … I started reading the Next Generation Science Standards, which were released Tuesday in their final form after several rounds of revision, reposting, and public comment.
I turned to page 74, of this PDF file, which is entitled “HS.Natural Selection and Evolution.” I have a huge interest in this, being a trained scientist who went to medical school and pursued a Ph.D. in neural and behavioral biology from a decent Big 10 university.
There I found the following “disciplinary core idea”:
LS4.A: Evidence of Common Ancestry and Diversity
• Genetic information, like the fossil record, provides evidence of evolution. …
How much money did taxpayers spend on these?! That sentence isn’t even correct. Any document that asserts that “the fossil record” is an example of “Genetic information,” as the word “like” implies, is not worth my time. Change “like” to “and” and then change “provides” to “provide” so it agrees with the subject of the sentence, and we might actually have a true statement worth teaching to kids. As stated, this document doesn’t deserve a place in our classrooms.
Focusing purely on recall, a sample standardized test question might be written to test students’ knowledge of this “disciplinary core idea”:
Which of the following is an example of genetic information?
A. the fossil record
B. the color of the sky
C. President Obama’s Second Inaugural address
D. none of the above
The answer would be (A), according to the standards officially published as 26 states’ “Next Generation Science Standards.”
This is quite a big document, 83 pages of color-coded “storylines,” so our analysis will take a while. But initially, I’m not pleased. Our science standards themselves weren’t really calling for an overhaul, although Maryland was one of the 26 lead states on the NGSS project.
Allowing simple factual errors to stand in the final document gives the impression that it was sloppily thrown together to meet some deadline. That is not how workers should write this type of document.
Countless hours of state and local educators were spent on the NGSS, hours paid for out of our taxes, and hours that could have been spent on regular state business. I realize Achieve and Carnegie paid for hotel rooms and travel to meetings, but these people did not declare vacation days from their state jobs.
Instead, we have produced another “curriculum” full of performance expectations that is notably an improvement over what many states have but not much of an improvement over others, particularly ours.
You seem to have misread the sentence you’re criticizing.
1) In the sentence you quoted, “like” means “as with”, not “such as”. The latter is a slang use and would have been poor grammar. The meaning might be clearer–though still the same and grammatically correct–if the clause were moved to read, “Like the fossil record, genetic information provides evidence of information.”
2) That sentence isn’t part of the standards, per se. It is part of the National Research Council’s “A Framework for K-12 Science Education”, which is quoted throughout the standards. Note the sentence above the one you’re criticizing, which reads, “The performance expectations above were developed using the following elements from the NRC document A Framework for K-12 Science Education.”
So, even if there were a factual error, you’d be mad at the National Academies, not the people who wrote the science standards.
3) If you read the sentence in context (see page 162 of the NRC “Framework…”), you’ll see that the previous section discusses the fossil record. So, referring to the fossil record is a segue, not an example.
4) One of the lessons I hope students will learn from the revised standards is the importance of recognizing their own confirmation biases in order to search for disconfirmatory evidence. That lesson would seem pertinent in this case as well.
Undoubtedly, the standards are imperfect. (They exclude a few critical things I strongly wish had been included on the philosophy of science.) However, they were written and reviewed by many well educated, well intentioned people–e.g., the National Academies, the National Research Council, hundreds of writers (including teachers, professors, researchers, etc.), and the general public–so perhaps your first conclusion shouldn’t be that you’re right and all of them are wrong (your pursuit of a Ph.D. notwithstanding).
Ncooty: Thank you for the clarification. I believe the sentence should be changed to reflect a reading that cannot be misconstrued based on reasonable and common usage of the word “like.” Both you and I have proposed a very simple change, either of which would make the meaning unambiguous. By the way, dictionary.com gives no indication that the meaning of “like” as “such as” is slang or informal usage. It provides the following sentence as an example of this usage: There are numerous hobbies you might enjoy, like photography or painting. There is no indication that this is nonstandard or even substandard usage of the word, although it does come in at meaning number 15 under “preposition.”
I apologize for my tone. However, the NRC’s framework is not being proposed as science standards that state boards of education should adopt and endorse. Rather, the quotations selected from the framework for inclusion in the NGSS are up for approval and endorsement by state boards of education at this time. OK, it may have been bad “editing” rather than bad “writing” by the NGSS team of hundreds, but the context is irrelevant when it comes to approval (since the NGSS team didn’t provide the context here): each assertion, construed in whatever way students and educators might take it, must be correct as it is found in the NGSS document. In a certain (mis)understanding of the word “like,” this one isn’t correct. When the sentence is in this document, it stands alone, and anyone might take it out of context when developing tests or other curricular or educational materials.
The recovery of genetic information from well preserved fossils was impossible before the 1990s, but advances in molecular biology have provided scientists with the tools to isolate, amplify, and even sequence ancient DNA. A study out of the University of Michigan provides more information, here.
Another way to phrase this sentence might therefore be, “Genetic information, including that obtained directly from fossils, provides evidence of evolution.”
Phrasing it this way might also serve to encourage learners to conduct further research in an area of science that interests them. The NGSS performance expectations do a very good job in that regard, as I have posted on several occasions and will continue to post as my analysis continues, I’m quite confident.