The Lived Experience of Standards Implementation in New York City Schools, 2011. CPRE Research Report # RR-75

The College and Career Readiness Standards, referred to as the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) in New York City, are increasingly the focus of educational reform efforts across the United States. Each year for the past several years, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has created a set of focusing expectations for schools in order to guide their engagement with the CCLS. Evaluation of CCLS implementation in New York City in 2011-12 allowed the authors to examine how a diverse sample of 16 elementary and middle schools engaged with the Citywide Instructional Expectations (CIEs). The sample of schools came from all five boroughs across New York City and represented a range of student demographics and performance. Through these analyses, patterns emerged that seemed to explain how different schools interpreted and implemented the CIEs. In this report the authors trace the ways that conservation-oriented and transformation-oriented schools engaged with different components of the CIEs. The authors found that the different orientations led schools to engage in looking at student work differently, to have different experiences with task selection and implementation, and to take different learning away from their experiences. Overall, the authors determined that schools with a transformation-oriented perspective made more progress towards the kinds of practices that will be required in the coming decade. These findings have important implications for schools and districts across the nation as they seek to grapple with Standards implementation.