Recent comparative data on high school graduates show that many American students are not well prepared in fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and that there is a persistent achievement gap according to the socioeconomic backgrounds of students. The research for this paper focuses on the role of elementary education in science as an important preparatory step. National trend data show a decline in instructional time in the elementary grades on science instruction over the past two decades. State‐level data show wide variation in the amount of class time spent on science education and a positive relationship between the amount of class time and student achievement scores in science as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress Grade 4 assessment.

With the exception of the procedures developed by Porter and colleagues (Porter, 2002), other methods of defining and measuring alignment are essentially limited to alignment between tests and standards. Porter's procedures have been generalized to investigating the alignment between content standards, tests, textbooks, and even classroom instruction as experienced by teachers and students. They have also led to the development of tools that hold promise for innovative uses in both research and the improvement of education practice. The purpose here is to define and illustrate innovative uses of two of the tools from Porter's work, content maps and a quantitative index of the degree of alignment. The intention is to put these tools in the hands of education researchers.With the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2001, the concept of alignment and how to measure alignment has taken center stage. The NCLB Act requires that states have challenging content standards for academic subjects and

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