Scope, Sequence & Coordination: 9th and 10th Grade Science (Synthesis)

The purpose of this report is to synthesize the 9th and 10th grade evaluation reports ascertaining the effectiveness of the SS&C project on ninth and tenth grade student achievement of the National Science Education Standards. Scope, Sequence & Coordination (SS&C) is a national teacher enhancement and curriculum development project committed to developing activities that help students become more scientifically literate as defined by the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1995). The SS&C project is guided by the following principles: 1) every student should study every science subject every year, 2) science should explicitly take into account students’ prior knowledge and experience, 3) students should be provided with a sequence of content from concrete experiences and descriptive expression to abstract symbolism and quantitative expression, 4) concepts, principles, and theories should be revisited at successively higher levels of abstraction, and 5) learning should be coordinated in the four science subjects so as to interrelate basic concepts and principles. SS&C was funded by the National Science Foundation to develop and implement the first year of a four year set of activities and this evaluation was designed to document the effect of the SS&C project in relation to the NRC standards.