The Transformation of Policy Ideas to Avoid Populist Backlash

• In Event: Putting State Policy in Context: Federalism, Polarization, and Populism

Abstract

Has the populist resurgence in U.S. politics retrenched state policies intended to redress economic disparities? When have states been able to re-brand policies in ways that “submerge” or “hide” ideas that provoke populist backlash? We marshal multiple original datasets to address these questions in the context of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. These include two original samples of Twitter data: one with a sample of geo-located tweets from 2010-2018, another of over 66,000 tweets from 2017-2018; a sample of 13,691 media articles drawn from newspapers from all 50 states from 2008-2017; a public opinion survey experiment on common educational standards based on national sample of 1,000 respondents from the YouGov platform; and 155 semi-structured interviews coupled with a national survey of teachers. We find that the ideas contained in the Common Core remain supported, embedded and embodied in state policy, in teachers’ practice, and in public opinion, but using different names. We document the transformation of terms used to refer to common standards in policy and practice, and discuss implications of submerging Common Core ideas, especially for under-resourced communities. The populist attack on the Common Core, our work suggests, raises the information costs for under-resourced communities when selecting instructional standards, assessments, and materials.

Why do we focus on the Common Core? The Common Core emerged in 2008 as the intellectual product of three non-governmental organizations: the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Governors’ Association, and the education organization Achieve. The initiative set out to encourage more ambitious instructional content in the United States and to redress educational inequities by encouraging states to adopt common standards, assessments, and instructional materials. Though the product of state and non-governmental organizations, the Common Core became a rallying cry for populist rhetoric that portrayed the initiative as the product of wealthy elites and the federal government. Some states that had previously signed on to the common standards and common assessments pulled out of the consortia. Education Secretary DeVos asserted in 2018 that the “Common Core is Dead.”

Is it? Or does it appear “dead” only when we look at state policies that use the brand name “Common Core”? We use a sample of geo-located tweets collected from 2010-2018 to demonstrate the transformation of the Common Core from an effort to share and discuss instructional components to a populist rallying cry. We then analyze the emergence of the less-politicized term "college and career readiness" as a vehicle for discussing instructional policy and practice, focusing on 13,412 tweets from mid July 2017 to mid October 2018. We supplement this with our survey experiment of public opinion on common educational standards. Using a national sample of 1,000 respondents from the YouGov platform, our experiment assesses whether respondents primed to think about liberal states who use common educational standards (California and Connecticut) are more or less likely to express support for common state standards, compared with respondents who do not receive the prime. We find that that respondents are significantly less likely to express support for common standards after receiving the liberal state prime. We then use our analysis of state media outlets to document the persistence of Common Core ideas in state policy and practice, albeit under different names. Our national survey of teachers reveals the ways in which the Common Core ideas continue to embed in teachers’ instructional practice. Those survey results coupled with our interviews, however, demonstrate how dismantling the Common Core brand has raised information-costs for under-resourced communities.

We approach our puzzle from the perspective of the spread and uptake of ideas rather than from the perspective of policy diffusion or policy implementation for several reasons. For one, the Common Core State Standards Initiative—like many other reforms—is much broader than a specific, discrete policy. For another, sources of ideas come not from one place—such as from government policy alone—but from a myriad of sources. For yet another, even though the Common Core represents a bold new move, there have been common standards in various aspects U.S. education for nearly a century, and common academic content standards in recent decades. The lines thus blur between the Common Core and prior standards, just as they blur between the Common Core and concurrent instructional improvement efforts. For these reasons, we refer to the spread and uptake of ideas in the Common Core era, rather than the implementation or diffusion of specific policies. By using ideas as our unit of analysis, we can more clearly reveal the implications of populist rhetoric.

Authors

• Susan L. Moffitt, Brown University

• Cadence Willse, Stanford University

• Marie Schenk, Brown University