For science standards, Minnesota presents a 23-page tabulated matrix without introductory statements or explanations. Such a tabulation could nevertheless be a positive feature, at least to this extent: In contrast to many other such documents, this one makes its organization immediately obvious, and the contents are easy for the reader to locate. The table columns are labeled Grade level, Strand, Substrand, Standard, and Benchmark. Benchmarks are, in effect, the working standards. Learning expectations are by grade level for K-8; high school is a single span. Presumably, high school courses are to be designed locally with reference to the strands, which are: History and Nature of Science; Earth and Space Science; Life Science; and Physical Science. All are at least touched upon in grades K-5. History and Nature of Science is mandated for all grades, but the middle grades limit science content to a single focus each.

The physical sciences get good representation in the lower grades, becoming thin and undemanding in the upper grades. As is too often the case, small errors detract from quality. G6:II.A.5: “The student will distinguish between [sic] volume, mass and density.” It is trivial so to “distinguish.” The real point is to define one of them (density) in terms of the other two. G6:II.A.6: “The student will use the characteristic properties of density, melting point, boiling point and solubility to identify and distinguish mixtures and pure substances. “What are the density, melting point, and boiling point of a mixture? G9-12:II.A.2: “The student will be able to explain the relationship of an element’s position on the periodic table to its atomic number and atomic mass.” Here “mass number” is more appropriate than “atomic mass.” The concept of potential and kinetic energy is introduced for the first time at G9-12 (II.C.1, 2)—rather late. On the whole, however, the organization for physics is good.

Life sciences are handled reasonably well, with a fair distribution of content over the subdisciplines of biology. Material on the existence and properties of fossils starts in grade 5. The term evolution appears explicitly in grade 7, albeit without, yet, the evidentiary underpinnings most important in the contemporary discipline. This continues in high school, but there it thins even further. The molecular, development, and population genetic components of modern theory are little in evidence. It is not as though they are too obscure to figure in a good high school biology program. In any event, there is no evidence so far in Minnesota’s standards of effort to weaken evolutionary biology.

Process material, under the heading Nature of Science, gets—relatively—full treatment and is on the whole reasonable, although there is redundancy and none of the usual vacuities is avoided. What is achieved, in a science standards document, by asserting that “the student will recognize that everyone can do science and invent things”? And one must wonder, when third-graders are supposed to “understand the nature of scientific investigations,” whether the writers ever had any easing of their addiction to boilerplate. In the end, most such boilerplate is innocuous. But some varieties may not be. “The student will recognize that science and technology are influenced by cultural backgrounds and beliefs and by social needs, attitudes, values and limitations.” Yes, certainly! But the whole point of a K-12 science education is to establish beyond misgivings that there are sound practices, elaborated over more than 300 years, taken very seriously in the natural sciences, whose purpose is—precisely— to detect and eliminate biases due to “social needs, attitudes, values and limitations.” Grade: “B.” 

December 2005 - The State of Science Standards, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, page 45.