Decoding Sentiment Signals: Lessons From the Political Reception of the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards

Abstract

Two major sets of U.S. content standards have changed since 2010: the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Whereas the CCSS received widespread pushback, the NGSS were broadly uncontentious. Why? Drawing from policy learning and networked publics theories, we used mixed-effects modeling to estimate how tweet authors, hashtags, and time explain sentiment in almost 2 million tweets related to both reforms from 2011 to 2023. Politically motivated, negative tweets from heterogeneous individuals and organizations explained CCSS’s sentiment. In contrast, tweets discussing NGSS were more uniform across science education professionals. We propose two educational reform trajectories—(a) politically driven to gradually accepted and (b) niche-specific to widely accepted—to guide future policy actors.