Dive Brief:
- The Every Student Succeeds Act requires high-quality standards that prepare students for college and career, and while they don’t have to be the Common Core, states that have already adopted and implemented the standards aren’t likely to turn away from them now.
- District Administration reports support for the standards is down among the general population as well as teachers, but creating new standards is such an intensive process that Noelle Ellerson, associate executive director of policy and advocacy at the School Superintendent Association, says few states will embark upon it while implementing ESSA.
- Even though backlash against Common Core tests continues to be fierce in certain states, another reality is that the standards are not easy to replace — even states that have repealed the standards have approved new ones that closely resemble the original.
Dive Insight:
Governors and state education agency leaders from 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia participated in the Common Core State Standards development process. Nearly all of them adopted the standards in their respective jurisdictions once they were released, though several have backtracked in the face of political opposition. The standards are called different things from one state to the other with fairly minor local variation, but the idea of common standards has largely stuck. The problem, however, is that a common test never caught on, so it will be hard to capitalize on the power of common standards if there is no way to standardize an assessment of student learning based on them.
As states shift their attention to ESSA and scale back the high-stakes nature of their tests, perhaps the opposition to common exams will lessen. Surely, though, the common standards are here to stay — at least for a while longer.