Science

Oregon Becomes Tenth State to Adopt Common Science Standards

By Liana Loewus — March 07, 2014 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Yesterday, the Oregon state board of education voted unanimously to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards, reports Chad Colby, director of communications for Achieve, which helped develop the standards.

The decision is not much of a surprise, as Oregon education officials told Education Week in January they were seeing strong support for the standards and that adoption was likely to occur this spring. Prior to this, Nevada was the most recent state to adopt—and did so just last week.

With the Oregon vote, 10 states and the District of Columbia have now officially adopted the common science standards, which focus on scientific inquiry, application, and engineering design. Adoption in Illinois is all-but-official, and currently pending legislative review.

The Next Generation Science Standards were finalized just under of a year ago. See this recent piece for more on the national pace of adoption—which has been slow overall but seems to have increased somewhat in recent months. We’ll see if that continues.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Curriculum Matters blog.