The Messaging and Communication Strategies of Common Core Advocacy Organizations

• In Event: 16.043 - Internal and External Influences on Common Core Policy Implementation

Abstract

Objective: The Common Core has brought with it a whirlwind of policy advocacy groups of all political stripes to influence perceptions of the purposes of the Common Core reform movement. The objective of this paper is to describe and analyze the strategies and communications of a sample of CC advocacy groups. This work follows naturally on the heels of the work of McDonnell and Weatherford (2013), who documented the early efforts of a coalition of organizations to put together the coalition in support of state adoption of the Common Core. It was perhaps inevitable that the promises of the early period would flake away as implementation hit reality and different coalitions began to both understand the constraints and implications of an actual policy, as well as the political benefits of taking a supporting or oppositional position.

Framework: To analyze the messaging strategies of CC advocacy organizations, we use a modified version of a framework developed by Scheneider and Ingram (1990) that identifies different tools that policymakers can use to encourage policy implementation. These tools include capacity tools that provide people with knowledge and information to inform their position and actions on a particular policy; symbolic tools that appeal to people’s beliefs and values to take a position on a policy; and incentive tools that show people about the tangible benefits associated with a particular policy or program.

Data: Between November 2013 and January 2014 we conducted structured interviews with the leaders of 20 advocacy groups who were largely supportive of the Common Core. This was just as the Common Core discussion was moving from with We asked them about their communications strategies around the Common Core, what were their messages/arguments, who were their target audiences, how they knew if their messages were having an effect, and how they were adjusting their strategies based on information they were learning. These interviews were recorded and transcribed.

Results: Messaging around the Common Core were done using mostly informational (16/20) and symbolic (11/20) tools (non-exclusive of each other). Respondents described providing an array of informational resources to their constituencies. Most respondents were struck at the both the scale of communication around the Common Core, which they felt was unprecedented in the education sector, and the activity using electronic (internet) and social media (twitter, facebook, Instagram, etc.). Respondents were nearly universally surprised by what they saw as, as one interviewee put it “the combative politicization” of the Common Core. Few anticipated this trend of the issue moving into what another person described as “the culture wars in the country.”

Significance: This research provides important empirical documentation of several important shifts in the ways that constituencies are built in education. First, the mechanisms of communication around major education issues has fundamentally changed, brought forward by the cultural divisions captured by positions on the Common Core. Second, new communication methods necessitate more nimble strategies and adjustments than were previously required. Both these trends anticipate ongoing polarization and deep rooted divisions around education issues.

Authors

• Jonathan A. Supovitz, University of Pennsylvania

• Patrick James McGuinn, Drew University