State Education Leaders Say Common Core Will Go Forward in their States

New Report from Center on Education Policy finds
Concern is high, however, about funding and support for Common Core implementation

This from the Center on Education Policy:

Education officials in a majority of states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards say it is unlikely that their state will reverse, limit, or change its decision to adopt the standards this year or next, a new report finds. The data, which come from a recent survey, also found that very few of the state leaders said that overcoming resistance to the standards posed a major challenge in their state.

The data were released today in “Year 3 of Implementing the Common Core State Standards: State Education Agencies Views on the Federal Role” by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) at The George Washington University. Forty states responded to the CEP survey about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The survey was administered in the spring of 2013. To date, 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the CCSS, in both English language arts and math. The survey respondents included 39 states that have adopted these standards in both subjects and one that has adopted the English language arts standards only.

“What we found is that, while there might be resistance to the Common Core, it isn’t coming from state education agencies,” said CEP’s Executive Director Maria Ferguson. “State leaders are more focused on finding resources and guidance to carry out the demanding steps required for full implementation.” Most of the 40 states that responded to the CEP survey also indicated support for particular legislative changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that would directly assist state and district efforts to transition to the CCSS.

The Administration has been criticized by some for being too involved in or heavy-handed in its encouragement of the state-initiated and state-led standards through federal initiatives like Race to the Top and the No Child Left Behind waivers. But only two states in the CEP survey reported that they did not want any federal assistance with CCSS implementation. Thirty states or more responded that their efforts to transition to the new standards would be helped by changes to ESEA, accompanied by funding, for activities such as state and local implementation activities around the Common Core, CCSS-related professional development for teachers and principals, and implementing the soon-to-be released assessments aligned to the CCSS.

“It is pretty clear that state leaders see the federal government as having a role to play in Common Core implementation. Exactly what that role is and how that support is structured moving forward will represent a key decision point for both the Common Core and any future ESEA reauthorization,” said Ferguson.

The CEP study found that 30 states favored legislative revisions to the Title I of ESEA—which supports education services for low-performing students in high-poverty schools—to help teachers in Title I schools teach CCSS content. Additionally, 29 states expressed support for revisions to Title III—which funds instructional services for English language learners—to help teachers of ELL students teach the content of the new standards.

“With many states still recovering from the recession, state leaders may view the federal dollars associated with the legislative changes as a means to provide them with needed funds to implement the Common Core,” said CEP’s Deputy Director Diane Stark Rentner.

The report can be accessed free of charge at www.cep-dc.org.

Key Findings
Several key findings from the survey shed light on states’ views about the role of the federal government in assisting them with transitioning to the CCSS.

• In the vast majority (37) of the CCSS-adopting states participating in the survey, officials considered it unlikely that their state would reverse, limit, or change its decision to adopt the standards during 2013-14. In addition, very few respondents said that overcoming various types of resistance to the Common Core posed a major challenge in their state; at the time of the survey in spring 2013, most respondents viewed this as a minor challenge or no challenge.
• A majority of CCSS-adopting states indicated support for particular legislative changes to the ESEA that would directly assist state and district efforts to transition to the Common Core.
• Only two survey states reported that they did not want any federal assistance with CCSS implementation.
• The Obama Administration’s waivers of ESEA/No Child Left Behind Act provisions appear to have helped some states with their efforts to transition to the CCSS and meet federal accountability requirements.
• If ESEA is not reauthorized during the 113th Congress, many states that received waivers see the need for additional non-legislative actions on ESEA to help them implement the CCSS.

When NGA and CCSSO kicked off the CCSS Initiative, it was, by intention, a state-instigated, state-led activity that would produce national, not federal, standards. The Initiative continues to emphasize that “the federal government had no role in the development of the Common Core State Standards and will not have a role in their implementation” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, n.d.). In the three years since the standards were released, this state/national focus has aided the adoption of the standards by many states that would have been opposed to adopting any federal education standards. The only direct federal funding provided for the CCSS was $437.5 million in economic stimulus money to support the development of assessments aligned to the CCSS.1 

The Obama Administration, however, has encouraged the adoption of college- and career-ready standards in other ways. States applying for Race to the Top funds must adopt “internationally benchmarked standards and assessments.”  In addition, states seeking a waiver of key provisions of ESEA as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) must adopt “college- and career-ready standards” and “aligned, high-quality assessments” (U.S. Department of Education, 2009; 2012). While states could meet the requirements of either program by adopting the CCSS, both programs stop short of actually requiring states to do so. States could fulfill these requirements by adopting other sets of internationally benchmarked or college- and career-ready standards that meet program criteria. In fact, two states approved for waivers did use alternative standards: Virginia, which did not adopt the CCSS in either subject, and Minnesota, which did not adopt the CCSS in math.