Welcome to the public online survey tool developed by the Office of Math and Science at the Florida Department of Education. The list of benchmarks for each course in the existing course code directory comprise a draft of the revised course descriptions for the science courses that will be offered in Florida’s K-12 public schools beginning in the 2008-2009 school year. These benchmarks are drawn from the 2008 revision of the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for science. These proposed lists of benchmarks were drafted by a committee of science supervisors and other science educators from across the state of Florida in April 2008. At this time, we are revising the existing courses in the course code directory. In the near future, the Florida Department of Education will offer the ability for school districts to propose additional science courses that were not previously offered in the course code directory. This survey review consists of revised course descriptions of the existing courses (as of February 2008) only.

The K-8 course descriptions are drawn directly from the grade level appropriate content standards that were written by grade level in the 2008 Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for science.

The benchmarks listed for the high school courses in this review are drawn from the four Bodies of Knowledge in the secondary level of the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for science. Individual courses may draw benchmarks from any Body of Knowledge in the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards. In other words, an Earth Science course does not have to consist of only Earth Science benchmarks, a Physics course may contain benchmarks from Bodies of Knowledge other than Physical Science, and so forth. Course descriptions for AP, IB, AICE, and similar courses will be drawn from the organizations that govern these programs; the state of Florida will not write duplicate or alternate course descriptions for these courses.

Information about the development of the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for science may be found at www.flstandards.org and www.fldoestem.org.

This page allows you to review the proposed revised science course descriptions (based on the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards). This will be available until July 31, 2008 at 5:00pm EST.

Please select the courses listed below that you would like to review. You can view the survey and the course description in separate windows by clicking on the links in columns 1 and 2. For a combined view, you can click on the link in column 3.