The Common Core Standards as a Systemic Initiative

• In Event: Constructing a Common Curriculum: System, Discipline, School, and Classroom

Abstract

At this moment in time, almost all states in the United States are formally participating in the newest effort to reform American public education: the Common Core State Standards. Never before in American history have more than a handful of states signed on to common standards. The purpose of this paper is to identify the ways in which the CCSS in mathematics (CCSSM) represent a significant discontinuity with past standards-based efforts to improve practice on a large scale in the U.S. and to outline a potential program of research for monitoring and learning from this “grand experiment.”

The paper relies on three distinct frameworks: First, the overall structure of the argument is drawn from earlier commissioned work by the National Research Council (2002) that outlined a framework for investigating the influence of standards. Second, I take a “sense-making” view of implementation (Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002), an approach to policy research that views implementing agents’ ways of understanding what policies and new curricula are asking of them as a key explanatory factor in the transformation of policies as they are enacted in schools and classrooms. Finally, the paper uses an approach to monitoring policy enactment called “theory-of-action” (Argyris & Schon, 1978) as an analysis tool.

Four discontinuities were identified based on a review of CCSS documents as compared to current state-based standards efforts: fewer, higher, clearer standards; focus on developing understanding over time; mathematical practices; common-ness (Stein, 2012). The following questions will be addressed in relation to each: What is the espoused theory-of-action regarding how each is expected to lead to improved student learning? What are the potential threats to the theory-of-action playing out as expected? What kinds of research efforts might be mounted to monitor the extent to which the theories-of-action are playing out as intended?

The arguments advanced in this paper will be lodged in two primary sources of evidence: publically available documents regarding the CCSSM and research on past standards eras and the obstacles that they’ve revealed to high-quality implementations.

By identifying discontinuities and pursing lines of questioning about them, this paper will identify where likely stresses are in the multiple layers of the education system that are operative in the CCSSM era. Using theory of action as an analytic tool helps in this regard because it uncovers often-implicit assumptions about how things should work. Finally, the “potential threats” offers a way to streamline research endeavors while retaining their coherence with the underlying aspirations of the CCSS in the United States.

References
Argyris, C., & Schon, D. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.

National Research Council. (2002). Investigating the influence of standards: A framework for research in mathematics, science, and technology education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Spillane, J., Reiser, B., & Reimer, T. (2002). Policy implementation and cognition: Reframing and refocusing implementation research. Educational Researcher, 72(3), 387-431.

Stein, M.K. (2012 July). Research Perspectives on Mathematics Standards Reform. Invited presentation for International Congress on Mathematics Education. Seoul, South Korea.

Author

• Mary Kay Stein, University of Pittsburgh