Welcome to ATLAS

Authentic Tasks for Learning and Assessment in Science

ATLAS is a free digital platform for all science educators in California. Created with teachers, for teachers, ATLAS provides a rich, growing library of NGSS-aligned performance tasks for grades K-12. Our goal is to empower educators by supporting authentic, phenomena-based instruction and assessment that brings science to life.

Why ATLAS? Meeting the Challenge of the CA NGSS

The California Next Generation Science Standards ask teachers and students to shift how we teach, learn, and assess science. This shift moves us away from a focus on discrete facts and toward a deep engagement with the practices and conceptual understanding of science, all in service of making sense of phenomena and problems.

Making this shift requires that students engage in authentic work for both learning and assessment. Finding the instructional and assessment resources that enable these shifts in their classrooms has not always been easy for teachers. ATLAS was built to help educators access these authentic tasks and integrate them into their classrooms.

Created with Teachers, For Teachers

A teacher-centered platform with peer-reviewed resources to empower educators and transform teaching through real-world science.

Free & Relevant Resources

A free, growing library of teacher-tested, engaging, and relevant performance tasks aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards.

Engage Students with Real Science

Authentic tasks that foster curiosity, collaboration, and durable skills like problem-solving and scientific communication.

Supportive & Collaborative

A platform to connect with peers, share and review tasks, and access professional learning resources to grow together.

ATLAS Foundations and Partners

ATLAS was established by California Senate Bill (SB) 153 (Statutes of 2023, Chapter 38, Section 113), which called for the development of a statewide repository of high-quality, curriculum-embedded performance tasks mapped to the CA Next Generation Science Standards.

With support from the California Department of Education, ATLAS is managed by the Los Angeles County Office of Education, and was developed in partnership with Digital Promise, Education First, and the CA NGSS Collaborative. Members of the State Performance Assessment Learning Community, convened by the Learning Policy Institute, supported nationwide task collection and analysis.

Most importantly, input from California educators at every stage of development was a key driver in all components of this work.

Five logos from the organizations that created ATLAS