Common Core: How Much Do People Know About Its Real Impact?

Author/s: 
Paul E. Peterson
Year of publication: 
2015
August 13, 2015

Earlier this week, my colleagues and I reported, as part of the 2015 Education Next survey of public opinion, that the level of support for the Common Core had slipped over the past two years from about two thirds to about half of the public. Yet opponents still number only about a third of the public, with the rest offering no opinion one way or the other.

Are these opinions about the Common Core driven by the public debate broadcast in the media, or are they rooted in direct knowledge about what is happening in their own school district? More specifically, do those who know that Common Core is being implemented within their school district think it is having a positive impact on their schools?

We tried to get the answer to that question by first asking the following:

As far as you know are the Common Core standards being implemented in your district?

If the respondent said yes, we then asked a second question:

Has implementation of the Common Core standards in your district had a generally positive impact on schools or do you think it has had a generally negative impact?

We then looked at the answers to these questions separately for those living in the 43 states that had adopted the Common Core (according to its website) and for those living in the 7 states that had not adopted the Common Core.

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