NC ed board votes to update K-12 science standards, emphasizing hands-on learning

North Carolina’s new science standards for K-12 schools will push for more hands-on learning.

The State Board of Education approved the new standards Thursday. Schools will begin implementing them this fall, and they’ll be fully implemented in the 2024-25 school year.

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction will later form “unpacking” documents that describe how teachers can implement the standards.

The first update to the general science standards since 2009 doesn’t change much of the content students will learn. The board also approved extended science standards for students with disabilities, which hadn’t been updated since 2011.

The science standards have been rephrased in many cases to urge lesson plans that are more interactive, embedding an approach the state is referring to as “scientific and engineering practices.”

The change may not alter science lessons everywhere; in many cases, teachers have already incorporated more hands-on — physically or virtually — lessons to teach science.

But the change is a recommendation from stakeholders, including many teachers and who wanted to rewrite the standards to suggest a more interactive approach to science than lessons that may simply ask students to read about a topic and then complete a worksheet.

Teacher Kelly Anderson, who helped work on the standards, gave the State Board of Education some examples during a previous meeting:

• Instead of asking that fourth-grade students be able to classify types of rocks, the new standards ask that the students “carry out investigations to classify rocks.”
• Instead of asking fourth-grade students to “infer” ideas of about the planets early environment, the new standards ask them to “analyze and interpret data” to show how fossils explain Earth’s early environment.

Perhaps students could classify rocks they are holding in their hands and looking at themselves, Anderson said, or perhaps students could classify rocks they’re examining online.

A hands-on approach is more aligned with a college a professional approach, Anderson said. Teaching these skills earlier on will help better prepare them for when they leave the K-12 system, she said.

“I’m really excited about the durable skills our students will get from this process,” Anderson said.

“Durable skills” are an emphasis of Superintendent Catherine Truitt, who wants to reframe school accountability in part around whether schools are successfully teaching students life-long skills. Last fall, Truitt unveiled a new “Portrait of a Graduate,” created with the help of a committee, that lists seven skills she wants schools to make sure every student has, such as critical thinking and communication.

The new standards allude to the Portrait of a Graduate, including an emphasis on critical thinking. But without changes to state law, schools aren’t required to follow the Portrait of a Graduate, Truitt said.

CORRECTION: The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction creates and finalizes unpacking documents. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated who had the final authority.