The 'quite small' impact of the Common Core to date

As part of the 2015 Brown Center Report on American Education from the Brookings Institution, Tom Loveless undertook an empirical examination of when the Common Core (CCSS) actually started, since, as he points out, it's difficult to gauge policy effect if you can't say when it began. His analysis uses surveys of implementations to model different CCSS starting points for states, and produces a second early report card on CCSS impact (the first was issued last year). Loveless takes NAEP data for 2009-2013 and two indexes of CCSS implementation, one based on data collected in 2011, the second from data collected in 2013, and finds fourth grade reading scores improved by 1.11 scale score points in states with strong CCSS implementation, compared to states that did not adopt CCSS. A similar comparison in last year's report found a 1.27-point difference on NAEP's eighth grade math test, also favoring states with strong CCSS implementation. These differences are quite small, at most 0.04 standard deviations (SD) on the NAEP scale. A threshold of 0.20 SD -- five times larger -- is generally the minimum for a test-score change to be considered significant. And Loveless stresses his findings are merely statistical associations, and cannot be used to make causal claims. He anticipates 2015 NAEP scores will be important indicators for the Common Core. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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