Science standards do address scientific literacy: A reply to Zucker and Noyce

Andrew Zucker and Pendred Noyce’s criticism of the Next Generation Science Standards ignores what the standards actually say.

In their article, “Lessons from the pandemic about science education,” Andrew Zucker and Pendred Noyce stress the importance of students making sense of the world around them, noting that students need to be engaged and informed and “able to distinguish scientific knowledge from misinformation.” In particular, they use the COVID-19 pandemic as a call to change the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). We agree with their emphasis on the importance of science literacy; however, we argue that they misrepresent the NGSS and conflate curriculum with standards.

The authors hook readers in their opening paragraph by making the startling claim that, under the NGSS, students can graduate high school without ever having “been asked to read science-related books or articles in the popular press. Nor, for that matter, will they have been taught how to find reliable sources of information about science or how to evaluate and reject scientific misinformation.” According to Zucker and Noyce, the NGSS suggests that students should always be doing hands-on science where they “conduct experiments, test claims and otherwise ‘do science’ in every class.” They follow this by stating that sometimes it is appropriate to also read and discuss scientific articles, among other scientific activities.