Research and Educator Feedback Critical to Common Core Success, Experts Say
By Edward Graham
The use of research-based evidence played an integral role in the formation of the Common Core State Standards, and implementation of the standards across the country is providing educators with the necessary tools to continue fine-tuning the initiative’s potential.At a recent American Youth Policy Forum event, a group of education experts convened to discuss the critical role of research in the Common Core.
At the heart of the Common Core’s creation was the reliance on scholarly studies and research, as well as feedback from employers and college faculty. The standards were influenced equally by shorter- and longer-term focuses—including analyses of student performance on college admission tests, TIMSS data, and reports from the National Research Council and the National Mathematics Advisory Council. The reliance on this sort of evidence-based research allowed for the Common Core’s creators to heavily invest in best-practice solutions.
Dr. Lorraine McDonnell, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and one of the panel’s featured speakers, has studied how research was integrated with other types of evidence into the formation of the Common Core. Utilizing a number of sources and data in her own research, Dr. McDonnell found that research-based evidence strengthened the resulting standards by “grounding them in available knowledge about students’ developmental processes, teaching and learning, the structure and logic of disciplines such as mathematics, and the skills that students needed to be prepared for college or entry level careers.”
The emphasis on research allowed the Common Core’s creators to largely bypass the political bickering