How to Read the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

1) Performance. Prior standards documents listed what students should “know” or “understand.” These ideas needed to be translated into performances that could be assessed to determine whether or not students met the standard. Different interpretations sometimes resulted in assessments that were not aligned with curriculum and instruction. The NGSS has avoided this difficulty by developing performance expectations that state what students should be able to do in order to demonstrate that they have met the standard, thus providing the same clear and specific targets for curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

2) Foundations. Each performance expectation incorporates all three dimensions from the Framework— a science or engineering practice, a core disciplinary idea, and a crosscutting concept.

3) Coherence. Each set of performance expectations lists connections to other ideas within the disciplines of science and engineering, and with Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and English Language Arts.

This chapter describes how these three unique characteristics are embodied in the format of the standards, beginning with the “system architecture.”