Prelude to the Common Core

Abstract

As states struggle with the notion of international competitiveness, the quality and rigor of academic content standards has come into question. While Ohio’s content standards are well regarded, the state initiated a process to revise the standards and eventually joined with the majority of states in adopting a voluntary set of national standards—the Common Core. This study uses the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) methodology to examine Ohio’s current math content standards in comparison to TIMSS, PISA, high performing international counterparts, and the recently released Common Core. Specifically, it examines whether the state’s standards are “a mile wide and inch deep.” Second, this study analyzes whether high performing countries’ standards are more aligned to Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) through the SEC lens of topic and cognitive expectations. Ohio’s standards generally are less focused than the international comparisons, not very aligned to TIMSS and PISA, and have lower cognitive expectations. The CCSS have greatly increased that focus by reducing the number of topics in the analyzed grade levels while increasing the levels of cognitive expectations. These results provide a baseline for comparison to the full implementation of the Common Core. Once fully implemented, policy makers will have a reference point for evaluation of policy goals.