The Common Core State Standards Initiative as an Innovation Network

• In Event: Organizational Theory in and out of Practice

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative as an innovation network. Using data on hypertext linkages on the World Wide Web, we describe an inter-organizational network of about 3200 organizations that arose to scale up the CCSS and link those standards to aligned academic resources such as assessments, instructional materials, and professional development. The data suggest that this network had a discernable “core-periphery” topology. In the paper, we describe how this led to complex educational reform effort that contained the seeds of a coherent system of instruction at the core but faced countervailing forces at the periphery that moved the reform effort toward resource proliferation and fragmentation.

Authors

• Brian P. Rowan, University of Michigan

• Mark White, Univerity of Oslo