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Letter Head: Jack O'Connell, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Phone number 916-319-0800

Date: September 16, 2005

Note: This letter went out as a joint letter from Jack O'Connell, State Superintendent of Public Instruction and Ruth Green, President of the California State Board of Education.

Dear Publishers of Science Instructional Materials for Kindergarten Through Grade Eight:

PUBLISHER RESPONSIBILITIES REGARDING THE
EDUCATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT INITIATIVE FOR THE
2006 SCIENCE PRIMARY ADOPTION OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

This letter relates to the 2006 Science Primary Adoption of instructional materials, and it will be regarded as Publisher Bulletin 2005-03.

Background Information

The Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI) was established by Assembly Bill (AB) 1548 (Chapter 665, Statutes of 2003). The EEI mandates the development of a unified strategy to bring education about the environment into California’s public schools, Kindergarten through Grade Twelve). More specifically, the EEI requires:

  • Development of education principles and concepts for the environment.
  • Alignment of the environmental principles and concepts to California’s academic content standards to ensure that students achieve mastery.
  • Development of a model curriculum for Kindergarten through Grade Twelve schools.
  • Incorporation of the environmental principles and concepts into criteria for adoption of textbooks for science, history-social science, English-language arts, and mathematics.
  • Alignment of the state’s diverse environmental education programs with the environmental principles and concepts.
The EEI and the 2006 Science Primary Adoption

In response to the EEI, Category 1, Criterion 11 was included in the 2004 Criteria for Evaluating Instructional Materials in Science, Kindergarten Through Grade Eight. This criterion specifies that to be considered suitable for adoption, instructional materials must provide:

Examples, when directly supportive of the California Science Standards, of the principles of environmental science, such as conservation of natural resources and pollution prevention. These examples should give direct attention to the responsibilities of all people to create and maintain a healthy environment and to use resources wisely.

Programs submitted for the 2006 Science Primary Adoption must include examples that meet the requirements of Category 1, Criterion 11.

Environmental Principles and Concepts and the 2006 and 2012 Science Primary Adoptions

As noted above, the EEI required the development of education principles and concepts for the environment for teaching elementary and secondary school pupils. The California Integrated Waste Management Board and the California Environmental Protection Agency adopted these principles, titled the Environmental Principles and Concepts (hereinafter referred to as “the Principles”), in December of 2004. The Principles are required to be incorporated in the evaluation criteria for textbook adoptions in Science, Mathematics, English-Language Arts, and History-Social Science, but only the criteria developed subsequent to approval of the Principles. Therefore, publishers are not required to include the Principles in their science instructional materials for the current 2006 Science Primary Adoption, since the Principles were completed after approval of the science criteria (which occurred in March 2004). However, publishers will be required to incorporate the Principles into instructional materials submitted for the next science primary adoption which is scheduled for 2012.

Though it is not a requirement of the 2006 Science Primary Adoption to include the Principles to fulfill Category 1, Criterion 11, we encourage publishers to do so. If included, those parts of a submitted program that address or reference the Principles will not be penalized under Category 1, Criterion 4, which requires that:

Extraneous lessons or topics that are not directly focused on the standards are minimal, certainly composing no more than 10 percent of the science instructional time.

Specifically, for the 2006 Science Primary Adoption, environmental science examples that reference the Principles will not be penalized as “extraneous lessons or topics” under Category 1, Criterion 4, as long as the examples are directly supportive of the California Science Standards.

The following additional resources related to the Principles and the EEI may be of interest to you:

If you have any questions regarding this subject, please contact Patrice Roseboom, Lead Consultant, Instructional Resources Unit, at 916-319-0509 or by e-mail at proseboo@cde.ca.gov.

Sincerely,

Original signed by,

JACK O’CONNELL
State Superintendent of Public Instruction		 RUTH E. GREEN, President
State Board of Education

JO/RG:pr

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