At the request of the State Education Department and in conjunction with the Business Coalition for Education Excellence, Achieve conducted an evaluation of the state's science standards, originally adopted in 1996, and the alignment of its grade 4 and 8 tests to those standards. Achieve shared its preliminary findings in a detailed report prior to New Jersey undertaking a revision of its science standards in 2001. Based on Achieve’s recommendations, New Jersey made changes to its science standards. Achieve provided the state with a summary of the evaluation of the state’s revised standards as compared with the 1996 edition, and the alignment of its science tests to the 1996 standards.

The evaluation’s major findings:

In revising its 1996 science standards, New Jersey made significant improvements by clarifying the standards and stating them with greater precision, developing standards in two-grade spans rather than four, and evening out the progression of knowledge and skills from one grade span to the next. Importantly, New Jersey also raised the rigor of its science standards by adding essential topics, focusing on the "big ideas" that unify all fields of science, and explicitly linking concepts and skills to related ones in mathematics.

While generally aligned to the 1996 standards, the balance of the tests at grades 4 and 8 needs to be improved in that some standards are overly assessed, leaving others—some of which are of greater significance—unassessed. The level of rigor of the grade 4 test needs to be increased.

Overall, New Jersey's science standards, tests and supporting documents — curriculum frameworks, test specifications and sample tests — provide the foundation for a strong science education program that could prove to be an example for other states.