Curriculum Column

A group of top scientists, policymakers, and teachers has embraced a plan to reverse the traditional sequence in which high school sciences are taught so that all students take physics in their freshman year, followed by chemistry, then biology.

Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, has put forward the idea in various articles and commentaries. But for the first time, a group of science-education leaders has met to discuss whether the plan is feasible.

Although most high schools teach biology first, then chemistry, with physics typically reserved for only an advanced group of juniors, Mr. Lederman believes that all students can benefit from a better grounding in the principles of physics. (See Education...