Common Core Standards: Why Did States Choose to Adopt?

In 2009, 48 states committed to joining the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a state-led standards development process for K-12 mathematics and English language arts. The draft standards—written in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and disciplinary experts—were released for public feedback in March 2010. Since the release of the final standards in June 2010, over two-thirds of all states have adopted the shared standards for mathematics and English language arts.

For states, there are many good arguments for adopting the Common Core State Standards: common standards provide clarity about what students are expected to learn in mathematics and English language arts; they help teachers zero in on the most important knowledge and skills; they establish shared goals among students, parents, and teachers; they help states and districts assess the effectiveness of schools and classrooms and give all students an equal opportunity for high achievement. But why did states ultimately decide to sign on?

We asked several state officials and education experts—including commissioners who head public elementary and secondary education in their states—to share their views on the adoption process so far. In responding, several looked toward implementation and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

When at the bottom, there is nowhere to go but up.

That’s the situation in which Tennessee found itself back in 2007, when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “Leaders and Laggards” report card gave the state an ‘F’ for truth in advertising about student proficiency. Weak assessments, coupled with low standards, meant that large percentages of students were testing proficient on state reading and math exams—even though only a fraction of them were clearing the bar on the more commonly accepted National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The message was that the state’s high school diplomas essentially had no value.

The lousy report card caused the state’s public and private sector leaders to take notice—and then take a series of decisive actions that ultimately made the state’s adoption of Common Core standards this past summer a noncontroversial, logical next step to improve education statewide. Tennessee’s three-year journey is a lesson in informed leadership and strategic action. While the external catalyst for reform may have been a publicly embarrassing low grade, the internal catalyst was a nonpartisan approach to building a coherent, strategic plan that engaged and aligned a wide range of stakeholders in reform efforts.

"While the external catalyst for reform may have been a publicly embarrassing low grade, the internal catalyst was a nonpartisan approach to building a coherent, strategic plan that engaged and aligned a wide range of stakeholders in reform efforts."

Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, responded quickly to Tennessee’s poor report card by acknowledging the system’s failure. Working with both Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature, Bredesen built broad public and political mandates for higher academic standards. After traveling the state to meet with business leaders, he called for a new, bold commitment to standards under the Tennessee Diploma Project. The State Board of Education made the necessary policy changes in less than a year, and then rolled out more rigorous coursework and tests in the 2009-10 school year.

Political and educational leadership efforts expanded with the 2008 emergence of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE), a nonprofit nonpartisan organization I founded to encourage sound policy decisions and thoughtful reform at the state and local levels. With a broad view of Tennessee’s reform potential, SCORE issued a call to make our schools the best in the Southeast within five years. SCORE’s work—including hundreds of conversations with educators, parents, and students in more than 80 town hall meetings across the state—helped set the atmospheric conditions necessary for Tennessee’s first-round win in the federal Race to the Top competition. Ongoing work includes solidifying and deepening the broad public support that will be needed to achieve comprehensive reform goals.

So when the time came in July 2010 to decide whether or not to adopt the Common Core standards, the State Board of Education’s decision was easy. Tennessee already had come a long way since its failing grade in 2007. With both political and business leadership aligned, it approached educational reform in a nonpartisan way. After the State Board’s action, we used the power of convening, developed a clear, well-articulated focus on innovative reform on a statewide basis, built a coalition of stakeholders, raised visibility, and increased public awareness.

While the next steps to implement reform will not be easy, support from the public and private sectors continues to grow, and both gubernatorial candidates this year have committed to continue this powerful statewide educational reform agenda.

In late July 2010, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education unanimously adopted the Common Core State Standards. For us, it was a natural, noncontroversial decision to make at the end of a deliberate, empirical review process.

For several years, our Commonwealth’s standards and assessments have enjoyed an outstanding reputation nationally. Our students have performed well in both national and international educational comparisons. However, we have not ever been complacent with that status. As good as our standards have been, as the common standards effort unfolded, Massachusetts was already preparing working drafts of new standards. We were ready, therefore, to provide a lot of coordinated input into the development of the Common Core standards.

"We concluded, therefore, that while Massachusetts standards were very strong, the advantages of adopting the Common Core standards outweighed the disadvantages."

As a lead up to our adoption of the final Common Core, we used an empirical process to judge the documents in terms of their content, rigor, clarity, vertical alignment, relevance to college and career readiness, and measurability. We received three types of reports. The first was a summary of an online public survey on the Common Core standards conducted by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; the second was a side-by-side comparison of Massachusetts working draft standards to the Common Core; and a third was an independent analysis of two groups of Massachusetts educators, one in PK-12 and the other in higher education. All three sets of input reached the same conclusion: that for the English language arts standards, the Common Core was a better choice than the Massachusetts working draft, and for math, that both the Common Core and the Massachusetts draft were excellent options.

We concluded, therefore, that while Massachusetts standards were very strong, the advantages of adopting the Common Core standards outweighed the disadvantages. And there would be opportunities to customize the Common Core in areas where we feel our standards are stronger.

As we begin to implement the Common Core, we are buttressed by two significant new awards from the U.S. Department of Education. Massachusetts has been awarded $250 million in Race to the Top funds, and we are serving on the governing board of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), one of two state consortia selected to develop new assessments that align with the Common Core standards.

While a lot of hard work lies ahead to help districts and schools with the new standards, we are committed to this new era of strategic educational reform that will strongly support teachers, new curricula, innovative instructional tools, data gathering and use, and new aligned assessments.

The Race to the Top (RTTT) competition was a huge incentive for states to adopt the Common Core standards. The process would not have gone so far, so quickly, without that financial incentive. (It "helped" that most states face budget crunches. But it also needs to be said that a couple of them were put off by this much involvement on the part of Uncle Sam.) But the adoption process likely would not have gone far at all if states had not recognized that the Common Core offered a better alternative than the current array of discrepant academic expectations across the land.

Now the discussion is fast moving beyond the adoption decision to “Now what?” Only some states won RTTT funds. It will be interesting to watch what happens in the states that had already signed on to adopt the standards but did not win. The real challenges in all states will now emerge in their implementation of the standards, especially as they settle on what assessment and accountability systems to use.

To gain real traction on the ground, two critical components must be aligned with the new standards: assessments to let states (and everyone else) know how successfully their students are moving toward the goal, and accountability systems to nudge, incentivize, reward, and intervene depending on the rate of progress.

The federal government is investing $330 million to kick-start new assessments to be aligned with the standards. Two consortia of states have signed on to this development effort, meant to yield an ambitious new approach to assessment. Whatever accountability systems are put in place must have teeth, with implications for all stakeholders in the education system—not just students or teachers. Fortunately, some states already have in place strong examples of effective accountability schemes—based on their old standards—that can be looked at for models.

"Properly done, the standards will gain traction and the students will gain knowledge and skills. This is a huge undertaking for the United States, but what could be more important?"

Along with assessment and accountability, other elements are essential to give the standards oomph. We obviously need instructional competence in the schools, including suitable curricula, instructional materials, and knowledgeable, committed teachers. Second, we need to mount a public awareness campaign to ensure the support and buy-in from local communities that will be required to make lasting changes in their schools and educational expectations. Third, beginning in preschool, we need to build prerequisite skills even as, in the postsecondary environment, colleges and employers need to be willing to incentivize and reward high-achieving students and schools, using the new standards and assessments as the metrics for achievement.

Implementation of the standards is now the key challenge. Properly done, the standards will gain traction and the students will gain knowledge and skills. This is a huge undertaking for the United States, but what could be more important?

When Florida’s content standards received an overall grade of ‘D-‘ in the Fordham Institute’s 2006 State of State Standards report, the time had come for our state to re-examine and renew its commitment to improving education. That report didn’t pull any punches: it also gave us an ‘F’ in math and called for the state to “go back to the drawing board.”

But that comparison of state standards, as uncomfortable as it was, only tells a part of the story: Florida also had not been faring well in international comparisons of mathematics standards. Analyses that compared Florida’s NAEP and TIMSS results to both the U.S. and top performing countries showed that only 27 percent of Florida’s students were at or above proficient levels for math, and 21 percent for science.

The messages from these two separate analyses were clear: Florida needed to develop new standards. So it did. The result in 2007 was a new, rigorous set of Florida’s Sunshine State Standards. Those standards fared much better in the 2010 Fordham Institute analysis that compared state standards to the Common Core State Standards, and received an ‘A’ in math and a ‘B’ in English language arts. Our standards set the bar for what we expected of the Common Core.

"We fully expect that the Common Core standards will enable us to compare our students with those in other states, and that we will be better able to benchmark our achievement with international standards. We feel these comparisons will help us to better serve our students in a competitive, global economy."

Because we had already gone through our own internal development standards development process and knew what to expect, we began to participate in the Common Core process early. Our involvement continued throughout the development and review processes. As the standards emerged, we came to understand the benefits of signing on and the value of having our students compete with others around the nation and around the world. And, because of bi-partisan state support, an understanding of the connection between education and our economic future, and the rigor of the Common Core standards, there was not much state opposition to adoption.

We fully expect that the Common Core standards will enable us to compare our students with those in other states, and that we will be better able to benchmark our achievement with international standards. We feel these comparisons will help us to better serve our students in a competitive, global economy.

We also realize the critical importance of new assessments that align with the Common Core standards, which is why Florida is serving as the fiscal agent for one of the multi-state consortia selected to develop the new assessments, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).