"It's Just an Option": State Coordinators Negotiate the Politics of Local Control During Standards Implementation

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  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum and Instruction at Multiple Policy Levels in the Era of the Every Student Succeeds Act

Abstract

While the majority of states adopted the Common Core State Standards almost a decade ago, researchers still know relatively little about how this new landscape has affected states’ approaches to supporting standards implementation. This study investigates how state education agency coordinators for English language arts understand local control and how local control influences their decision-making through in-depth interviews with 18 state coordinators. We find that while coordinators’ definitions of local control varied, most coordinators perceived local control as a constraint on their ability to provide concrete curricular and instructional resources to teachers within the state.

Authors

• Emily Hodge, Montclair State University

• Serena Jean Salloum, Ball State University

• Susanna Latham Benko, Ball State University