ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative, examining how research use varied over stages of the process and how it was integrated with other types of evidence. By drawing on elite interviews, it finds that CCSS promoters and developers used evidence in much the way that policy analysis research would predict and that while research evidence was a major resource, it was combined with other types of evidence depending on political and policy goals at different stages of the CCSS process. The chapter explores the question of how the use of research and other types of evidence differs as policy evolves from an idea to a set of prescriptions or incentives that are considered for formal enactment. It describes the use of research in the development of the CCSS in K–12 mathematics and English-language arts and their subsequent adoption in 45 states. The chapter also describes the special role of policy entrepreneurs.
