What Lies Beneath the Science Achievement Gap: The Challenges of Aligning Science Instruction With Standards and Tests

Amongst all instructional issues facing science education, the one that exerts the most substantial impact on the lasting achievement gap is the “mile-wide, inch-deep ” curriculum, which is created by superficial alignments among standards, tests, and instructional materials. “If science educators had a dime for every time the phrase ‘standards-based ’ or ‘aligned with standards’ pops up in science textbooks, instruc-tional product brochures, conference programs, or in-service workshop presentations …” Diminishing “standards ” and “alignment ” to overused buzzwords or superficial checklists masks the dire need for a truly systemic and operational standards-based alignment in science education. In this article, we report the findings of an ongoing collaborative effort between cognitive researchers and urban science teach-ers to align everyday teaching with standards, tests, and research-based pedagogy. We begin with an analysis of how the width vs. depth dilemma in science teaching manifested itself in yearly test scores and the achieve-ment gap. We review the problematic issues of alignment among standards, instruction, and assessment. We argue that simply matching standards with so-called “standards-based ” materials creates a false sense of comfort in a superficially aligned curriculum. We advocate for schools, districts, even states to undertake the difficult but necessary planning process to create a framework of performance objectives to serve as the critical hinge linking standards, instruction, and assessment. Such curriculum planning must set as its first priority the goals of effectively cutting down the girth of yearly sci-ence content while efficiently manag-ing the handoff of students between grade levels