What Do I Think of Florida’s Proposed Science Standards? Let’s Do the Math.

Over the past week, my social media feeds have filled up with posts about Florida’s proposed B.E.S.T. Standards for Science, and several people have tagged me and asked what I think. Most of those posts link to news coverage that focuses on what the draft leaves out.

Central Florida Public Media reported that the proposal sidelines evolution and climate change. The Orlando Sentinel described parents and teachers who are “gobsmacked” by the changes, and the Sun Sentinel quoted experts who say Florida is “moving backwards” on both topics. The draft is the state’s first comprehensive rewrite of its science standards since 2008, public comment is open through October, and the State Board of Education is expected to vote in December. So this is the right moment to weigh in.

Here is where I land. People who care about what is missing from the standards should say so during the comment period. Education is a public good, and the requirements we set for it should come out of a democratic process in which everyone has a voice. That is exactly what a public review is for.

But I want to raise a different issue, one that has gotten almost no attention and that matters no matter where you stand on what belongs in the standards. My biggest concern is not what is missing. It is how much is there. When I counted everything the 9-12 draft asks teachers to teach and compared it to the time students actually spend in science class, the numbers were not even close.

First, What Are We Counting?

The 9-12 draft is organized in layers, and the state’s foreword to the standards explains how they fit together. Every code has five parts: subject, grade band, strand, standard, and benchmark. To make sure we are all talking about the same thing, here is what each layer means, using the first entry in the document as an example.

Strands are groups of related standards organized around a common scientific concept or theme. The 9-12 draft has 17 of them, such as Energy (EN), Matter (M), and Cell Biology (CB).

Standards are the overarching expectations within a strand, labeled with the strand code and a number. SC.912.EN.1, for example, asks students to explain the forms, conservation, transfer, efficiency, and sources of energy.

Benchmarks are the specific expectations within each standard, and they add a fifth part to the code. SC.912.EN.1.1 is “Recall the forms of energy.” SC.912.EN.1 has six benchmarks in all, covering forms of energy, conservation of energy, mechanisms of energy transfer, efficiency, renewable sources, and nonrenewable sources.

Benchmark clarifications sit under each benchmark and spell out what instruction must include. SC.912.EN.1.1 has three. Clarification 1 lists nine forms of energy students must learn (kinetic, gravitational potential, elastic potential, thermal, chemical, electrical, sound, nuclear, and electromagnetic). Clarification 2 calls for using models to classify and represent those forms. Clarification 3 calls for examining the historical developments behind our understanding of them.

The clarifications are where the instructional demand lives. Nearly every one of them (3,919 of 3,935) begins with “Instruction includes.” And they are not optional extras. The foreword states that the benchmarks, clarifications, and examples together “carry the full weight of the standards.” That is why I treat each clarification as one topic in the math that follows. Here is what the draft contains across its 17 strands.

Table 1. What the Proposed 9-12 B.E.S.T. Science Standards Contain

Strand	Standards	Benchmarks	Clarifications
Energy (EN)	8	42	165
Energy in Earth Systems (EE)	7	28	91
Energy in Space Systems (ES)	7	28	85
Energy in Living Systems (EL)	7	29	105
Matter (M)	4	48	160
Force and Motion (FM)	4	35	140
Planet Earth (PE)	16	86	424
Space (SP)	10	25	150
Life (SL)	9	55	328
Cell Biology (CB)	11	96	428
Plants (P)	19	114	445
Animals (A)	20	221	597
Human Body (HB)	11	59	257
Nutrition (NT)	4	19	95
Fungi (FG)	16	52	207
Microorganisms (MO)	10	50	220
Applying the Science of Life (ASL)	5	10	38
Total	168	997	3,935

That is 168 standards, 997 benchmarks, and 3,935 clarifications. The count also leaves out the K-12 Scientific Thinking and Reasoning Standards (STARS), which cover inquiry, evidence-based reasoning, communication, engineering design, and more. The foreword says the STARS should be woven into every lesson rather than taught as a separate body of content. That is the right approach, but it means each class period has to carry even more, not less.

How Much Time Do Teachers Actually Have?

Florida requires three science credits to graduate: Biology 1 plus two additional courses that are equally rigorous, with at least two of the three including a laboratory component. Under Florida Statute 1003.436, one credit requires a minimum of 135 hours of instruction (or 120 hours in schools approved for block scheduling). That gives a student at most 405 hours of high school science. Here are the assumptions behind the math, so you can see exactly how I got my numbers and adjust them if you see things differently.

Our Assumptions
	Every student is responsible for mastering every 9-12 standard within the three required science credits.
	Each credit is 135 hours, for a total of 405 hours. Block schedules (120 hours per credit, or 360 total) would make every number below worse, so I use the larger figure to be generous.
	Scenario A: all 405 hours go to instruction.
	Scenario B: 80 percent of the time goes to instruction and 20 percent goes to testing and test preparation, leaving 324 hours.
	A class period is 50 minutes. That makes 405 hours equal to 486 class periods and 324 hours equal to about 389 class periods.
	Each benchmark clarification is one topic.
	Introducing a topic takes one class period. This is the bare minimum, essentially a single lecture.
	Teaching a topic to mastery takes three class periods: introduce it, practice, correct errors and reteach, then practice again. Mastery is the state’s own expectation: the foreword says each benchmark is to be mastered by the end of the grade level or course.
	Nothing else competes for time. No assemblies, fire drills, field trips, or absences.

Table 2. Instructional Time Available for Each Standard

Unit	Scenario A (405 hours)	Scenario B (324 hours)
Per standard	145 minutes (about 3 periods)	116 minutes (about 2 periods)
Per benchmark	24 minutes	20 minutes
Per classification	6 minutes	5 minutes

Spread evenly, a teacher has about six minutes per clarification under the most generous scenario and about five minutes once testing is taken into account. Five minutes is not enough time to introduce an idea, let alone help students learn to use it.

Table 3. Class Periods Needed Compared with Class Periods Available

Approach	Periods Needed	Times the Time Available (405 hours)	Times the Time Available (324 hours)	Equivalent Science Credits
Introduce every topic (1 period each)	3,935	8.1x	10.1x	24.3
Teach every topic to mastery (3 periods each)	11,805	24.3x	30.4x	72.9

Put another way, simply introducing every topic once would take about 24 science credits instead of 3. Teaching every topic to mastery would take about 73. In the time students actually have, a teacher could introduce roughly 10 to 12 percent of the topics or teach 3 to 4 percent of them well.

But Isn’t That Counting Too Much?

It is fair to push on these numbers, so I tried three of the most likely objections.

Benchmarks are meant to be taught together. The foreword is clear that benchmarks are not intended to function as isolated units of instruction, and that effective teaching integrates related benchmarks while students investigate phenomena, analyze evidence, and construct explanations. I agree completely. That is how science should be taught. But integration does not make the time problem go away. Suppose every class period addressed three clarifications at once. Introducing everything would still take about 1,312 periods, or 2.7 times the 405 hours available, and teaching it all to mastery would take 3,935 periods, more than 8 times. And investigating phenomena takes more time per lesson than telling, not less, which is exactly why it needs room in the schedule.

Some clarifications describe practices, not content. About 1,137 of the 3,935 clarifications refer teachers to the modeling, mathematics, laboratory, or timeline tables, which the foreword describes as supports to be integrated at the point of instruction. Remove all of them and 2,798 content clarifications remain. Introducing those alone would take 5.8 times the 405 hours available, and teaching them to mastery would take more than 17 times. Even if we count only the 997 benchmarks and give each one a single class period, we still need about twice the time students have.

Not every student takes every course. True, and the state may well assign these standards to a range of courses. But the life science strands alone contain 2,615 clarifications. Biology 1, the one science course every student must take, has about 162 class periods. Even if only a third of the life science clarifications end up in Biology 1, that course would have more than five required topics for every class period.

Why Does This Keep Happening?

Standards documents grow this way for understandable reasons. Every content area has advocates, and nobody wants to be the person who left something important out. When rigor is defined as covering more in less time, adding a topic always looks like raising the bar and cutting one always looks like lowering it.

You can see this dynamic in the public response to the draft so far. Nearly all of it has been about what to add back. During the state’s virtual listening session, for example, participants pointed to terms such as natural selection, gene flow, and genetic drift that they wanted to see named explicitly. Asking for an important idea to be included is entirely reasonable. The problem is a process in which the only question on the table is what to add, because then the list can only grow.

The result is that the fear of leaving something out makes it impossible to teach anything well. Being exposed to an idea is not the same as learning it. Mastery takes time. Students need opportunities to use an idea, get it wrong, get feedback, and try again. The state’s own foreword sets goals that require exactly that kind of time. It says the standards are meant to support deep understanding, long-term mastery, and meaningful application of scientific concepts and practices. Those are the right goals. They cannot be reached at five minutes per topic.

When there is more to cover than time to cover it, teachers end up making the cuts themselves, one classroom at a time, with no shared sense of what matters most. Students in different schools learn different things, and most of what they encounter, they encounter only briefly.

A Better Approach: Start With the Clock

Instead of starting with everything that could be taught and hoping it fits, I would suggest working backward from the time constraint.

1. Start with the time that is actually available. Begin with the instructional hours students really get, after setting aside time for testing, review, and the disruptions every school year brings. For three credits, that is somewhere between about 290 and 405 hours, not an unlimited budget.

2. Decide how much time it takes to teach a topic well. If mastery means introducing an idea, practicing it, correcting errors, reteaching, and practicing again, plan for at least three class periods per topic, and more for the big ideas students will use again and again.

3. Cap the number of topics to fit. Divide the time available by the time per topic. Using the numbers above, 389 class periods at three periods per topic allows about 130 topics across all of high school. That is roughly 3 percent of the clarifications in the current draft.

4. Prioritize what everyone really needs to know and be able to do. With a hard cap in place, the question changes from “Is this important?” (almost everything is) to “Is this more important than something else on the list?” That is a far more productive debate, and it is exactly the kind of debate a public review process is built for. Topics that do not make the cut for every student can live in elective and advanced courses, where there is time to teach them well.

Putting It All Together

So what do I think of Florida’s proposed science standards? There are many ideas in them worth teaching, and the debate over which ideas belong is a healthy part of a democratic process. The foreword also describes the kind of science teaching I would like to see in every classroom: integrated, focused on phenomena and evidence, and aimed at mastery. The problem is that, as written, the 9-12 draft asks for far more than that kind of teaching can accomplish in three credits. Even under the most generous assumptions, there is not enough time to introduce everything once, much less help students learn to use these ideas and practices to make sense of the world.

A smaller set of topics taught well will do more for Florida students than thousands of topics taught briefly. The surest way to get there is to start with the clock and build the standards to fit it.

Make Your Voice Heard

The Florida Department of Education is accepting feedback on the draft science standards through October 2026, and the State Board of Education is expected to vote on the final version in December. You can read the drafts and submit comments at fldoe.org/standardsreview. Whatever you think about which topics belong in the standards, I hope you will add one more question to your feedback: how much instructional time did the writers assume it would take to teach all of this?