Abstract
Adoption of the Common Core State Standards in California and across the nation marks an ambitious plan to overhaul the country’s educational standards in favor of new more rigorous standards, which has changed the way teachers approach both curriculum and instruction. California’s State Board of Education adopted a gradual implementation plan that phased in the different components of Common Core State Standards in an effort to make the transition more manageable for districts and schools. This thesis focuses at the school level and shares a unique view of the experience of educators and staff at two schools in a high school district in Northern California implementing Common Core State Standards. In this thesis, I used structured interviews with educators as my primary source of data and interviewed six staff members at the school district office and nine individuals at each high school consisting of administrators and teachers of English, mathematics, and science. From the literature, I developed a comprehensive analytical framework that focuses on a bottom-up approach and aligns with the large degree of local discretion that exists in public education. I then selected five variables to analyze the data: collaboration, communication, teacher buy-in, applying technology, and professional development. I found that the educators that were interviewed reported that they are optimistic about the long-term benefits of Common Core but are worried about the more immediate challenges of implementation. Educators and staff perceive time and capacity to be the biggest constraint to success because of the huge workload required to provide training for teachers and develop new curriculum. Teachers reported that they think the best tool they received to help them address the challenges of Common Core implementation was their Teachers On Special Assignment counterparts (TOSAs). TOSAs provided intensive support and guidance to each team of teachers to help the teams stay on top of trainings, curriculum design, and new student assessments. Additionally, stakeholders should note that Science teachers voiced additional concerns around a lack of support, guidance, and to understand and integrate both Common Core and NGSS standards concurrently. California’s educational stakeholders would benefit from further research on the opportunities discovered in this thesis around 1) aligning Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) across subject areas 2) investing in TOSAs to provide support and guidance to teacher teams 3) focusing on digital fluency for students to meet the increased use and focus on technology.