Literacy Principles and Standards

A set of literacy frameworks have been developed through a collaborative effort of educators, scientists, and policy specialists, with support of NSF and NOAA, to describe what citizens should know to be literate about components of the Earth system. These frameworks describe aspects of the Earth when considered alone, and they complement each other in describing the entire Earth system. They are intended to be useful to promote informed decision-making in all sectors of society, and they are a resource for teachers to use in planning curricula. In order to help you with your planning, they are linked to science education standards and benchmarks. Check out these frameworks to see how they can help you with your science teaching!

Use these links to view each of the individual frameworks:
Atmospheric Science Literacy
Climate Literacy
Earth Science Literacy, Earth Science Literacy Principles - The Big Ideas and Supporting Concepts of Earth Science
Ocean Literacy,  Ocean Literacy (PDF file)

This site contains information on the current status of Earth science education in the United States. This information includes: K-12 enrollment numbers, teacher certification requirements, course requirements for grades 8-12, science content standards, grades in which science is assessed, textbook adoptions and more.