Abstract
The shift from mathematics and English language standards unique to each state to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), now adopted by 45 states, represents a major change in US education policy. Also notable is the advocates’ promise that the standards would be “research and evidence based.” Drawing on a conceptual lens grounded in the policy analytic and political science research literature, this chapter examines how research and other types of evidence were used over the course of the Common Core process, what CCSS participants learned from past unsuccessful attempts to implement national standards, and how participants combined peer-reviewed research findings with other types of evidence (e.g., statistical data, expert judgment, practitioner knowledge). Study data include content analysis of key documents, interviews with leading participants at the national level and in four states, and notes from participant observers. Research use in the CCSS process underscores its role in framing how people think about policy problems and solutions; learn from past political and policy failures; and integrate research with experience, prior beliefs, and other sources of information.
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- 1.
The study on which this chapter is based was supported by a grant from the W. T. Grant Foundation as part of its Uses of Research Evidence Program. We were assisted in our data collection by Lisa Argyle, Alex Cortez, Marika Fain, Cecilia Farfan-Mendez, Jeanette Yih Harvie, Natalie Miller, Arlene Perez, Mabel Perez, Kristoffer Smemo, Chelsy Thompson, and Kimberly Zilles at UC Santa Barbara and by Stephanie E. Dean, Ashley Clark Perry, and Lindsay Shouldis at the Hunt Institute.
- 2.
These four states were selected to provide regional variation and to include representation from states receiving Race to the Top funding and ones not receiving it. Half the interviews were conducted with national-level actors; the balance was divided among respondents in the four states. National-level respondents ranged from congressional staff to executive directors of national organizations (including teachers, school boards, and civil rights groups as well as groups focused on general education policy advocacy), in addition to participants in the CCSS process (including the drafters and members of work groups and validating committees). State-level respondents included state education agency leadership, legislators, university researchers, teachers, and representatives of education policy advocacy groups.
- 3.
About 10 % of the interviews were conducted over the telephone, the remainder in person. The average duration of the interviews was between 45 and 60 min. Interviewees were assured that their responses would be confidential and not attributed to them or their organization, so only their role positions are noted in citing interview data.
- 4.
In addition to those produced by organizations active in the Common Core movement, news articles, op-eds, editorials, and blog posts on the CCSS which have been published by Education Week, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are among the artifacts that have been archived and coded. Similar artifacts were also archived from the largest circulation newspapers in each of the four states (Los Angeles Times, Indianapolis Star Tribune, Boston Globe, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal).
- 5.
We discuss the use of evidence during this early phase of the CCSS in McDonnell and Weatherford (2013).
- 6.
For more details on the different types of research and other evidence used in the standards development process, see Weatherford and McDonnell (2013).
- 7.
In collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Education, Achieve also conducted a comparative content analysis of the revised Massachusetts standards and the CCSS and found a 90 % alignment overall. However, MBAE commissioned the WestEd analysis because it perceived Achieve as biased, stemming from its support of the Common Core. The Massachusetts SBE unanimously adopted the CCSS on July 21, 2010. At the same time, one of the major groups opposing the CCSS, the Pioneer Institute, is located in Boston and continues to argue that the state’s adoption of the Common Core is weakening the quality of academic content in the state’s classrooms (personal interviews).
- 8.
Learning trajectories or progressions are defined as “empirically supported hypotheses about the levels or waypoints of thinking, knowledge, skill in using knowledge, that students are likely to go through as they learn mathematics and one hopes, reach or exceed the common goals set for learning. Trajectories involve hypotheses both about the order and nature of the steps toward the goals of school mathematics” (Daro et al. 2011, p. 12). Researchers acknowledge the probabilistic nature of learning progressions and that existing ones require additional examination (Sztajin et al. 2012).
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McDonnell, L.M., Weatherford, M.S. (2014). Research Evidence and the Common Core State Standards. In: Finnigan, K., Daly, A. (eds) Using Research Evidence in Education. Policy Implications of Research in Education, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04690-7_9
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