A draft tool that educators, school districts, and publishers will eventually be able to use to see if their instructional materials are aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards is now available for public review.
The NGSS Primary Evaluation of Essential Criteria for Alignment is intended to help curriculum reviewers decide whether a program has “the essential features of an NGSS-based program.” Once finalized, it can be used to conduct alignment studies of full science programs, kit-based materials, and textbooks.
The draft document is open for public comment on the NGSS website from now until July 1.
Achieve, the group that led the development of the common science standards, also released a tool, known as EQuIP, for evaluating individual lessons and units for NGSS alignment last year. The EQuIP rubric works with the new draft tool to look at science programs in their entirety.