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The Common Core debate on Twitter and the rise of the activist public

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Abstract

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were adopted with broad bipartisan backing in 46 states in 2010. Yet by 2015 they had become a lightning rod for a range of critiques about the education system while public support declined precipitously and became increasingly partisan. Not coincidentally, the CCSS were also the first major education initiative to play out in a social media environment. In this study we used mixed methods to analyze the debate surrounding the Common Core on Twitter for a 6-month period in 2013–2014, with a focus on the central participants in the discussion and the linguistic argumentation they used. We found an active debate about the Common Core on Twitter, consisting of about 190,000 tweets from 53,000 distinct actors. Using social network analysis, we identified three major factions in the debate, which represented supporters of the CCSS, educators who opposed the CCSS, and a large contingent of opponents from outside of the education industry. We also detected that many of the most prolific participants from outside of education were individual activists, rather than members of formal advocacy organizations. Analyzing the content of the debate amongst the most influential participants, we found it to be less about the CCSS themselves than a proxy war about larger education-related social issues. Finally, through an examination of the language of the tweets, we determined that the central members used a form of linguistic argumentation called ‘politicalspeak,’ which they employed to rouse their followers and influence the public discourse. Thus, the tactics of the factions on Twitter, particularly opponents of the CCSS from outside of education, employed both issue framing and linguistic strategies to establish a dominant narrative. Based on these findings, we argue that the discourse on Twitter at the time of the study was less of a means to introduce new ideas and perspectives, then it was amplify the voices of a broader array of public activists seeking to influence the direction of public policy.

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Notes

  1. Alaska, Texas, Virginia and Nebraska did not adopt the Common Core, preferring their own state standards. Minnesota adopted the Common Core ELA standards, but not those in mathematics.

  2. Wang and Fikis examined a year of tweets (December 2014–December 2015) using both #commoncore and #ccss, and found that 88% used #commoncore, 17% used #ccss, and 8% used both.

  3. There were 158 transmitters and 139 transceivers in the elite group, but 39 were members of both groups. To see the Twitter identities of these participants, go to: www.hashtagcommoncore.com/#2-1.

  4. These numbers add up to more than 659, due to multiple categories mentioned in some tweets.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Jonathan Supovitz

  2. Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Philadelphia, USA

    Jonathan Supovitz

  3. Department of Education Studies, University of California, San Diego, USA

    Alan J. Daly

  4. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain

    Miguel Del Fresno

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  1. Jonathan Supovitz
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  2. Alan J. Daly
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  3. Miguel Del Fresno
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Correspondence to Jonathan Supovitz.

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Supovitz, J., Daly, A.J. & Del Fresno, M. The Common Core debate on Twitter and the rise of the activist public. J Educ Change 19, 419–440 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-018-9327-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-018-9327-2

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