I’ve chosen to look a little deeper to find the research that either supports or challenges the use of the Common Core State Standards in my home state of North Carolina. I feel that over the past 5 school years our children have been unwilling participants in a study that has gone really, really wrong. Unwarranted risk has been applied to their education. Why? How did our children’s test scores benefit or suffer? What has been the result? The answers based on true scientific study or analysis of test scores is hard to find.
Since 2010, North Carolina has spent $66 million in professional development for 100,000 teachers to prepare them for Common Core (Leslie, 2014). The majority of this funding was from federal grants issued to states that chose to institute the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). North Carolina Department of Public Instruction did not disclose the cost of developing the curriculum needed to implement the standards, as well as lesson plans, new state tests to meet the standards, or textbooks and materials for the new curriculum (Leslie, 2014). The $66 million figure also does not include what each of the 115 school districts have spent on implementing Common Core in their localities (Leslie, 2014). Another sources says that “The state has spent nearly $72 million of the RTTT [federal Race to the Top] grant on transitioning to the new state standards, which includes CCSS, and an additional $68 million on building local districts’ technological capacity to deliver on the new standards” (Wagner, 2014). That is an estimated total of $140 million spent by the state on top of what local school districts spent on CCSS implementation. After such great effort, money and time spent implementing Common Core across the state since 2010, the North Carolina Legislature voted on July 16, 2014, to repeal the controversial standards and replace them by standards drafted by a new state commission (Leslie, 2014). The 2014-2015 will be the last school year under the Common Core practices (L. Stewart, personal communication, January 21, 2014). (Image from images.google.com)
I sought to find research in North Carolina that would either support a decision to keep or repeal Common Core in the state. The argument against CCSS is that its development did not include the right stakeholders. Wagner (2014) reports
The process should have included more input from teachers, parents and other stakeholders… The Common Core State Standards were commissioned by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers… The standard-setting and writing of the standards included a significant number of people from the testing industry, but did not include a significant number of experienced teachers, subject-matter experts, and other educators from the outset, nor did it engage other informed and concerned interests, such as early childhood educators and educators of children with disabilities.
Remember, I started on this journey to find the actual research that would support North Carolina’s decision to repeal CCSS or the possible reasons a repeal should not have taken place. You may also recall the Department of Education’s promise to the Nation that CCSS would be better than standards reforms of the past because these standards were internationally benchmarked (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). Finally I found two points of reference in peer reviewed sources. One that give the rankings for North Carolina within the CCSS and another that outlined the issues that teachers had with CCSS.
The National Education Association provided rankings on CCSS related areas for the 43 states that adopted the standard. Most notably, North Carolina ranked first in increase of student enrollment (4.3%) in 2013 and first in decrease in average teacher salaries for teachers (-15.3%) (NEA Research, 2014). North Carolina is ranked 46th in teacher pay (NEA Research, 2014). This article was really fluffy with statistics related to enrollment numbers and teacher pay but nothing about how students scored on the standardized tests.
The second article was a qualitative research report which followed three teachers during the implementation of CCSS in North Carolina. In the same year that CCSS was fully implemented in the 2012-2013 school year, North Carolina’s public school annual report showed teacher turnover also increased to a five year high of 14.3 percent (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). The three teachers explained that administrative faculty received the CCSS trainings and in turn relayed the information to faculty during staff meetings and teacher workdays (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). They received very technical assessment training materials by the stacks (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). Subsequently, administrative faculty sent link to websites via email for teachers to navigate and learn to utilize in their own free time (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). The lack of support felt by these teachers lead to their attrition. This was a very interesting article, but…
I am still in search of the true data that explains how well students performed on the new CCSS testing in North Carolina. For more information on CCSS, please visit http://www.corestandards.org/, the Common Core State Standards Initiative website.
References
Leslie, L. (2014, July 17). North Carolina spent tens of millions on Common Core. Capitol Broadcasting Company, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.wral.com/nc-spent-tens-of-millions-on-common-core/13821047/
NEA Research. (2014). Rankings of the States 2013 and Estimates of School Statistics 2014. National Education Association. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/rankings-and-estimates-2013-2014.html
Saylor, E. E., & Kerkhoff, S. N. (2014). Change Is the Only Constant: Beginning Teacher Perceptions of Implementing the Common Core State Standards. Current Issues in Education, 17(3).
Wagner, L. (2014, May 1). Replacing Common Core to cost NC more than millions. NC Policy Watch. Retrieved from http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/05/01/replacing-common-core-to-cost-nc-more-than-millions/
Since 2010, North Carolina has spent $66 million in professional development for 100,000 teachers to prepare them for Common Core (Leslie, 2014). The majority of this funding was from federal grants issued to states that chose to institute the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). North Carolina Department of Public Instruction did not disclose the cost of developing the curriculum needed to implement the standards, as well as lesson plans, new state tests to meet the standards, or textbooks and materials for the new curriculum (Leslie, 2014). The $66 million figure also does not include what each of the 115 school districts have spent on implementing Common Core in their localities (Leslie, 2014). Another sources says that “The state has spent nearly $72 million of the RTTT [federal Race to the Top] grant on transitioning to the new state standards, which includes CCSS, and an additional $68 million on building local districts’ technological capacity to deliver on the new standards” (Wagner, 2014). That is an estimated total of $140 million spent by the state on top of what local school districts spent on CCSS implementation. After such great effort, money and time spent implementing Common Core across the state since 2010, the North Carolina Legislature voted on July 16, 2014, to repeal the controversial standards and replace them by standards drafted by a new state commission (Leslie, 2014). The 2014-2015 will be the last school year under the Common Core practices (L. Stewart, personal communication, January 21, 2014). (Image from images.google.com)
I sought to find research in North Carolina that would either support a decision to keep or repeal Common Core in the state. The argument against CCSS is that its development did not include the right stakeholders. Wagner (2014) reports
The process should have included more input from teachers, parents and other stakeholders… The Common Core State Standards were commissioned by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers… The standard-setting and writing of the standards included a significant number of people from the testing industry, but did not include a significant number of experienced teachers, subject-matter experts, and other educators from the outset, nor did it engage other informed and concerned interests, such as early childhood educators and educators of children with disabilities.
Remember, I started on this journey to find the actual research that would support North Carolina’s decision to repeal CCSS or the possible reasons a repeal should not have taken place. You may also recall the Department of Education’s promise to the Nation that CCSS would be better than standards reforms of the past because these standards were internationally benchmarked (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). Finally I found two points of reference in peer reviewed sources. One that give the rankings for North Carolina within the CCSS and another that outlined the issues that teachers had with CCSS.
The National Education Association provided rankings on CCSS related areas for the 43 states that adopted the standard. Most notably, North Carolina ranked first in increase of student enrollment (4.3%) in 2013 and first in decrease in average teacher salaries for teachers (-15.3%) (NEA Research, 2014). North Carolina is ranked 46th in teacher pay (NEA Research, 2014). This article was really fluffy with statistics related to enrollment numbers and teacher pay but nothing about how students scored on the standardized tests.
The second article was a qualitative research report which followed three teachers during the implementation of CCSS in North Carolina. In the same year that CCSS was fully implemented in the 2012-2013 school year, North Carolina’s public school annual report showed teacher turnover also increased to a five year high of 14.3 percent (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). The three teachers explained that administrative faculty received the CCSS trainings and in turn relayed the information to faculty during staff meetings and teacher workdays (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). They received very technical assessment training materials by the stacks (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). Subsequently, administrative faculty sent link to websites via email for teachers to navigate and learn to utilize in their own free time (Saylor and Kerkhoff, 2014). The lack of support felt by these teachers lead to their attrition. This was a very interesting article, but…
I am still in search of the true data that explains how well students performed on the new CCSS testing in North Carolina. For more information on CCSS, please visit http://www.corestandards.org/, the Common Core State Standards Initiative website.
References
Leslie, L. (2014, July 17). North Carolina spent tens of millions on Common Core. Capitol Broadcasting Company, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.wral.com/nc-spent-tens-of-millions-on-common-core/13821047/
NEA Research. (2014). Rankings of the States 2013 and Estimates of School Statistics 2014. National Education Association. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/rankings-and-estimates-2013-2014.html
Saylor, E. E., & Kerkhoff, S. N. (2014). Change Is the Only Constant: Beginning Teacher Perceptions of Implementing the Common Core State Standards. Current Issues in Education, 17(3).
Wagner, L. (2014, May 1). Replacing Common Core to cost NC more than millions. NC Policy Watch. Retrieved from http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/05/01/replacing-common-core-to-cost-nc-more-than-millions/