Effects of College- and Career-Ready Standards on Student Achievement

• In Event: College- and Career-Readiness Standards Implementation at the National, State, District, and Classroom Levels

Abstract

Objective
This study is designed to assess the effects of college- and career-ready (CCR) standards on student achievement in mathematics and reading, both overall and for key student subgroups (e.g., students with disabilities and English language learners).

Theoretical Perspective
Since the 1980s, standards-based reforms have been a crucial part of state and federal policy efforts to improve education. In the latest wave of standards-based reform, all 50 states and the District of Columbia adopted new CCR standards by 2015 in both mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA), which call for the mastery of ambitious content that will prepare students to succeed in college and career. No rigorous research evidence, however, is yet available on the effects of the new standards on student achievement. This study is intended to begin to fill in this gap.

Methods
This study employs a comparative interrupted time series (CITS) design, which compares changes in student achievement from before to after the adoption of the new standards in states with higher standards prior to the CCR standards adoption (i.e., treatment states) with the corresponding changes in states with lower prior standards (i.e., comparison states). The underlying assumption is that the CCR standards represent a stronger form of “treatment” for states with lower prior standards than for states that already had rigorous standards in place prior to the adoption of the new standards. For the CITS analyses, we define treatment and comparison states based on two alterative measures of the rigor of states’ prior content standards, drawing on the work of Carmichael, Martino, Porter-Magee, & Wilson (2010) and Schmidt and Houang (2012). The analyses will be performed using a state-year-level regression with state and year fixed effects as well as a set of time-varying covariates.

Data and Measures
Measures of student achievement for this study are state-average NAEP scores—both overall scores and subscale scores—in math and reading for grades 4 and 8, for all students and separately for key student subgroups. Currently state-level NAEP data are available for 1990 to 2015, but state-level NAEP data for 2017 should become available in fall 2017.

Results
Preliminary results from the study based on 1990-2015 NAEP data for the overall student sample were presented at the 2017 AERA meeting. Those results revealed significant negative effects of CCR standards on student achievement in reading and no significant effects in math during the first 5 years after the adoption of the new standards, when most states were transitioning from the old to the new standards. For the 2018 AERA meeting, we will present results updated with the latest 2017 NAEP data (which will allow us to examine effects up to 7 years after the adoption of CCR standards), as well as results for key student subgroups.

Significance
Results from this study will provide much needed knowledge about the current wave of standards-based reform, in particular, the effects of CCR standards on student achievement, both overall and for key student subgroups.

Authors

• Mengli Song, American Institutes for Research

• Rui Yang, American Institutes for Research

• Michael S. Garet, American Institutes for Research