Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Subject Area: Science

Achieve the Core

The Achieve the Core website, created by Student Achievement Partners, contains free content designed to help educators understand and implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Developed in the spirit of collaboration, the website includes many tools designed to provide foundational knowledge for understanding the CCSS by describing the essential changes in practice required by […]

Measuring the Monitoring Progress K-12 STEM Education Indicators: A Road Map

This roadmap provides information for measuring and reporting on the 14 STEM Education Indicators as described by the National Research Council’s report on monitoring successful science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) K-12 programs. SRI’s roadmap summarizes available data on each indicator and proposes more detailed operational definitions, as well as actions and future work needed […]

Performance Assessment Resource Bank

Performance assessments require students to construct an original response rather than bubbling or filling in a correct answer. This website provides teachers, leaders, and policymakers with high-quality, expert-reviewed performance tasks, tools, and resources aligned to college and career ready standards in K-12 math, ELA, science, and history/social studies. In addition, this website includes tools and […]

Relationships and convergences among the mathematics, science, and ELA practices

A product of the Stanford University Understanding Language initiative, this Venn diagram is a tool that effectively illustrates the overlap and grouping of student practices (and student capacities) from four sets of seminal documents: the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects; the CCSS […]

Science Teacher Inquiry Rubric (STIR)

The Science Teacher Inquiry Rubric (STIR) is a two-page observation and teacher-reflection tool, most appropriate for supervisors, principals, or other observers of classroom teachers, and possibly for use by classroom teachers themselves, to assess classroom instruction and practices with regard to inquiry-based science. Developed in 2003, the STIR was based on the National Science Education […]

South Carolina STEAM Implementation Continuum

The purpose of the South Carolina STEAM Implementation Continuum is to provide statewide guidance and consistency with regard to STEAM implementation. To accomplish that purpose, the document sets forth a common language for STEAM implementation and establishes indicators in a continuum format that describe early or “Emerging” to model or “Practicing” STEAM schools or programs. […]