Common Core Implementation: Great Expectations Meet Ground-Level Challenges

• In Event: 35.082 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 35.082-4 - Common Core Implementation and Politics

Abstract

Substantial effort and resources have gone into implementing the Common Core reform over the past four years. Using baseline data from 2011 interviews with the reform’s policy entrepreneurs, policy documents, and over 1,200 recent news articles about 10 diverse states, this study explored expected and unexpected benefits and challenges of the reform. Findings suggest different patterns in the reporting of promises and pitfalls among data sources, some unanticipated promises and pitfalls, and limited identifiable patterns of reported promises and pitfalls by state characteristics. One lesson that might be drawn for policymakers is this: Support garnered by grasstops v. more grassroots approaches may expose a reform’s shallow roots, thereby creating political uncertainty, related media attention, across state context.

Authors

• Nikolaus Barkauskas, The Pennsylvania State University

• Mindy L. Kornhaber, The Pennsylvania State University

• Julia Mahfouz, The Pennsylvania State University

• Erica Beth Sausner, Pennsylvania State University

• Kelly Griffith, The Pennsylvania State University