Chemistry in past and new science frameworks and standards: Gains, losses, and missed opportunities

Science education frameworks and standards play a central role in the development of curricula and assessments, as well as in guiding teaching practices in grades K-12. Recently, the National Research Council published a new Framework for K-12 Science Education that has guided the development of the Next Generation Science Standards. In this paper, we discuss what we see as critical gains, losses, and missed opportunities in the representation of chemistry in these new documents compared to the previous National Science Education Standards. The goal is to facilitate the comparative analysis of these two documents from a chemistry perspective, and elicit issues that we judge demand greater discussion and reflection among chemistry educators.