After Gov. Christie’s political pullback from Common Core N.J. standards will look similar, Penn GSE researcher predicts

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“Our recent study of the Common Core controversy on Twitter showed that the Standards debate is largely a political proxy war about other contentious education issues rather than about the quality of the Standards themselves. In this vein, Governor Christie’s move away from the Common Core should be viewed as a political, not educational, decision. These standards are infused with a lot of the latest research on how students learn, and re-crafting them is no small task. When the smoke clears, New Jersey will likely rebrand the Common Core as its own, and not really change much about them. So they will be called the New Jersey Core Standards, but will still be largely aligned with the CCSS."

- Dr. Jonathan Supovitz

Credentials:

• An education policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, Supovitz recently led a study analyzing how the Common Core debate played out in Twitter. With the #CommonCore project, Supovitz found the heated debate is actually a proxy war for broader disagreements about education policy and the very direction of the country.
  • Co-editor of the forthcoming book, “Challenging Standards: Navigating Conflict and Building Capacity in the Era of the Common Core.”
  • Director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
  • Examined how the Common Core debate was an issue in 2014 gubernatorial elections across the country. 
  • He can discuss why and how the standards were created, and what they actually mean for educators, parents and teachers.
  • He can also talk about the political forces at play in this debate, from both liberals and conservatives, and how that debate is affecting what happens in the classroom.