Mixed Signals: How Concurrent Policies and School Organization Send Conflicting Messages About "Rigor for All" in Common Core Implementation

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

Abstract

Objective
The objective of this paper is to illuminate the factors influencing Common Core implementation and equity in a large countywide district in the South. This study traces equity-oriented rhetoric related to the Common Core (e.g., "rigor for all," and equity "across zip code") from the national level to the classroom level, analyzing how English/Language Arts teachers understand and enact the Common Core in their classroom instruction.

Theoretical Framework
This investigation of teachers' decision-making in the context of the Common Core relies on a sense-making perspective of the policy implementation process. In contrast to the top-down, technical-rational view of policy implementation, the sense-making perspective acknowledges that local actors like teachers and principals, sometimes called "street-level bureaucrats" (Weatherley & Lipsky, 1977), actively make meaning of available policy messages in interaction with the environment and pre-existing beliefs, values, and experiences (Coburn, 2001; Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002)

Method and Data
This case study of Common Core implementation relies on qualitative data collected across three high-income, three mixed-income, and three low-income middle schools in a metropolitan district considered a leader in Common Core implementation (23 interviews with English/Language Arts and reading teachers and coaches, 110+ hours of classroom observation, and curriculum documents). Using NVIVO software, interview, observation, and document data was coded and analyzed using both deductive codes derived from the sense-making conceptual framework (e.g., policy messages, aspects of the environment, and individual/background factors).

Results
District-level professional development related to the Common Core primarily framed the standards as a technical reform, or a series of practices that teachers should do. At the same time, the district organizes students into reading and English/Language Arts classes based on students' state test scores, reifying hierarchical, often deficit, views of student ability, and signaling that state test scores are an accurate measurement of students' instructional needs. Teachers' beliefs about student ability affected their decisions about how to modify the district-wide curriculum for their different groups of students. In this district context, Common Core policy signals interact with other, concurrent policies, which in turn interact with how systems, schools, and teachers organize students for instruction: all of these factors shape teachers' normative beliefs about students. These factors together ultimately send mixed signals to teachers about student ability and the degree to which "rigor for all" is possible.

Significance
This paper is well aligned with the 2015 program theme, "Toward Justice: Culture, Language, and Heritage in Education Research and Praxis". The Common Core is a major national policy effort whose prominent rationale has been to create greater educational equity. This research points to the importance of addressing both school organization and teachers' normative beliefs about students to realize the potential of "rigor for all".

Author

• Emily Hodge, Montclair State University