Common resistance to Common Core? by Emily Hodge

One of the lessons from David Tyack and Larry Cuban’s classic book on educational reform, Tinkering Towards Utopia (1995), is that reforms are enacted when they are supported by a diverse coalition. In other words, reforms are enacted when multiple groups believes that the same reform policy will serve their differing purposes. This certainly seemed to be the case in the initial phase of the Common Core State Standards, when the idea of “fewer, clearer, and higher” standards that were consistent across states was supported by an unprecedented coalition of business, civil rights, government, and labor groups (see McDonnell and Weatherford’s (2013) article “Evidence Use and the Common Core State Standards Movement: From Problem Definition to Policy Adoption” in the American Journal of Education for a detailed explanation of the varying reasons why so many different groups initially supported the Common Core). However, is it a corollary to Tyack and Cuban’s lesson about the power of diverse interest groups to enact reform that the reverse is true? Can a diverse coalition of interest groups not only come together to enact, but also to dismantle, a reform?

This piece first describes the strains of resistance to the Common Core State Standards—what groups are opposed to the Common Core and why? Then, I explore whether there are any signs that these two groups have formed a united coalition across party lines to oppose the Common Core.

Despite the initial, widespread support for the Common Core, a significant number of parents, teachers, scholars, and policy-makers across the aisle are now opposed to the Common Core, though they generally oppose different aspects of the standards and their implementation. These groups have both built up significant grassroots opposition to the Common Core, but so far, each group is composed of likeminded individuals with similar political views.

On the conservative side, the Tea Party and grassroots groups of concerned parents’ campaign against the Common Core centers on local control. This group sees the Common Core as federal intrusion into state and local control over education because of the Obama administration’s support of the Common Core in Race to the Top. When many states and districts were facing teacher layoffs due to severe budget cuts during the 2009 recession, the Obama administration offered a share of $4.35 billion dollars to states through the Race to the Top competition. States were awarded points in the grant process for adopting a specific set of reforms, such as teacher evaluations that included evidence of student growth and a set of “college and career ready standards” (i.e., the Common Core). In addition to being upset about a perceived federal overreach, some of the conservative groups are concerned about the content of the standards themselves—the mathematics standards are said to endorse “fuzzy math,” while the literacy standards’ focus on nonfiction is sometimes interpreted as deemphasizing classic American literature.

On the other side of the aisle, another grassroots movement of liberal teachers, parents, and activists has grown vocal in opposition to the Common Core. This second group, with Diane Ravitch as its most prominent member, has raised concerns over who stands to gain financially from the Common Core effort, the role of the Gates Foundation in the standards’ creation, the lack of field testing of the standards, and the way in which the standards have been implemented in the midst of changing assessment and teacher evaluation policies. While some prominent figures from this second group (e.g., Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers union) supported the Common Core in theory, its implementation—especially coupling the Common Core standards and assessments to new teacher evaluation systems—has been the source of a great deal of concern.

That Common Core critiques are coming from both sides of the aisle has already been well covered in the media (see, for example, NPR, Education Week, Vox, The New York Times, and U.S. News & World Report), but what has not been explored is the degree to which there is cooperation across party lines in rolling back Common Core implementation. Is such a coalition actually forming, or is each group merely talking to those who are ideologically likeminded?

After closely following Common Core resistance for the last two years, my answer to this question until recently would have been that the anti-Common Core coalitions seemed basically divided along party lines with little communication between them. For example, conservative groups sponsored an anti-Common Core conference in September 2013 at the University of Notre Dame, while the liberal Network for Public Education held its own conference in March 2014 at the University of Texas-Austin to protest the privatization of education (the Common Core was not the sole topic, but it was a prominent portion of the agenda). The two conferences drew from distinctly different audiences, had different sources of financial support, and featured different keynote speakers—all corresponding with the conservative and liberal coalitions described above.

However, a recently released documentary film, “Building the Machine,” (thanks, Pat McGuinn, for bringing this to my attention!) as well as growing bipartisan support for anti-Common Core legislation, makes me think that perhaps the anti-Common Core movement has become more unified across party lines. The film “Building the Machine” is produced by the Home School Legal Defense Association (generally thought of as a conservative group) and features snippets of interviews with people and organizations usually associated with conservative opposition to the Common Core: James Milgram, Sandra Stotsky, and representatives from the Heartland Institute and Pioneer Institute. However, the film also features a prominent liberal critic of the Common Core, Paul Horton. Horton is a history teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School and was a panelist on the Common Core panel at the progressive Network for Public Education Conference. Horton’s blog posts are also frequently disseminated by Diane Ravitch. The central critique of the film is that the Common Core is an untested reform promoted by the Obama administration and Bill Gates. This is a critique shared by both liberal and conservative groups.

Taken alone, a documentary featuring one liberal voice is hardly convincing evidence that an anti-Common Core coalition is developing across party lines. However, recent anti-Common Core legislation has received bipartisan support in states where there is strong grassroots support from both liberals and conservatives—especially when such bills are framed as reducing the consequences of high-stakes testing. In my current state of New Jersey, a bill that would pause the high stakes consequences for teachers and students attached to Common Core assessments and establish a task force to review the Common Core and accompanying PARCC assessments passed the New Jersey Assembly with an overwhelming bipartisan vote (72 yes; 4 no; 4 abstentions, with 84% of Republicans and 94% of Democrats voting yes). In the New Jersey State Senate, the vote was anticipated to be overwhelmingly positive as well; of the 40 members in the state senate (24 Democrat; 16 Republican), the bill had 12 sponsors almost evenly split across party lines. The progressive grassroots group Save Our Schools NJ and the conservative groups the Morris Patriots and the West Bergen Tea Party (among others) sent almost identical emails to their members, encouraging them to contact their state senators to demand a vote in favor of the senate bill. Of course, the bipartisan bill ended up as a moot point when Governor Chris Christie stalled a Senate vote in favor of negotiating his own executive order to reduce the consequences attached to PARCC tests, but even the executive order—praised by the New Jersey Education Association—represents a level of bipartisan agreement.

So, is a coalition of Common Core-resisters actually forming across party lines, or is each group still only talking to those who are ideologically likeminded? Though there may be a small amount of cross-talk, perhaps the most common phenomenon here is that both liberal and conservative groups who resist aspects of the Common Core have become better organized and are clearly communicating to legislators and governors that—for different reasons—they all want the Common Core standards or assessments to be modified, curtailed, or repealed entirely. And legislators are clearly listening. Three states (South Carolina, Indiana, and Oklahoma) have now gathered enough political momentum to repeal the Common Core, and hundreds of anti-Common Core bills have been introduced nationwide. As Common Core implementation continues, the Common Core debate is worth watching closely to see whether or not these interest groups will form stronger ties to work together for the “common” goal of Common Core repeal.

Emily Hodge is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Theory and Policy program at Penn State University.  She is a former middle school English teacher, whose research interests include curriculum policy and the changing nature of the American school district. Her work on the different visions of “Common Core instruction” in English/Language Arts Common Core professional development texts has been published in English Teaching: Practice and Critique and is available HERE.