In response to concerns over the need for a scientifically literate workforce, increasing the STEM pipeline, and aging science standards documents, the scientific and science education communities are embarking on the development of a new conceptual framework for science, led by the National Research Council (NRC), and aligned next generation…

This article presents a brief history of the events leading up to the current US biology education standards, a brief examination of the National Science Education Standards for biology, and a description of the three recently developed biology curricula that were designed to address the new standards. Several evaluative studies of these curricula…