So how did they go about streamlining the standards? Well they got representatives from all over the state, in the science curriculum areas of their expertise (lots of teachers by the way) and they asked them to estimate how long it would take to teach each concept during the school year. Needless to say, the school year came out to way more than a 180 day curriculum.
Then the revision team carefully looked at the vertical alignment. They tried to eliminate any duplication of concepts throughout the grade levels. They also looked at whether or not the concept would provide a foundation for high school courses and they tried to make sure that the concept was appropriate to teach at the grade level that it was assigned to. There was much discussion between the grade levels of each curriculum and if something was omitted, the omission was approved by many of the high school teachers on the committee to make sure that the concepts would not have a direct affect on students as they came up to high school courses.
You can view the final recommendations of the streamlined standards that are currently up for adoption are here:
Final Recommendations (January 2017) Science, Kindergarten - Grade 2 (PDF, 1,317 KB)
Science, Grades 3 – 5 (PDF, 1,605 KB)
Science, Grades 6 – 8 (PDF, 867 KB)
Science, High School (PDF, 1,317 KB)
Comments identified on the left-hand side link to explanations for the proposed changes. To view a comment, click on the number of the comment or scroll to the end of the grade level or course.