Potential of The Next Generation Science Standards

This article on Education Week examines the potential and promise of the recently released draft of The Next Generation Science Standards.  The author, Arthur H. Camins, is the director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, N.J.  He is optimistic about these standards:

• Advances in the learning sciences embodied in the framework and the NGSS draft leave us optimistic that we have an opportunity to counter the backward-looking pressures generated by increasingly test-focused federal and state policy.
  
• ...the goal is not new parameters for accountability testing, but rather a more compelling values-driven agreement about what knowledge and abilities we want to nurture in young people so that they can make a difference in the world.
  
•  Learning-outcome expectations in current state standards are typically expressed in factual knowledge statements, such as “recognize that ...” Alternatively, for each core idea, the NGSS states: “Students who demonstrate an understanding can ...” and follows with such phrases as “construct explanations of...” “develop models to represent ...” “collect and generate evidence to ...” and “design and evaluate solutions that ...” This clarifies that students should not only know about the natural world, but rather be able to engage in and use the practices of scientists and engineers. We are optimistic that this approach can provide students with intellectual tools to prepare them for careers, citizenship, and personal decision making.
  
• Situating learning in problems that have social and personal meaning for students has the potential to engage students who are all too often disengaged.
  
• I shared in the palpable excitement there among science educators, and I am also encouraged that there is significant overlap with the common-core standards.
  I remain deeply concerned, however, that in schools across the country, teachers and administrators are still viewing these developments through the distorting prism of highly consequential tests. I am worried that these pressures will keep us looking at the station we should have left behind, rather than innovating and imagining what we need to do to make progress in preparing young people to be shapers of a yet-to-be-defined future.
   

I can't help but be optimistic about the standards after his glowing review; however, I take his words with a grain of salt.  Yes.  We should have abandoned high-stakes testing long ago, but it still exists.  How will this culture affect the implementation of such a wonderful idea?  What new assessments will arise from these standards?  What about the money?

My hope is that the goals stated in these standards make it impossible to develop a high-stakes test.  How can we measure a students' ability to create a hypothesis on a bubble test?  We can't.  It is an important skill - the standards say so! - so maybe we should drop the standardized test idea. Are you listening, policy makers?  Powerful people in education?  Drop the standardized test idea for these standards now.  Let's save us all some time and energy (and maybe get a few less grey hairs, too).