Common Core's model ignored teacher input

Marianne Iksic and I realized that though the state standards were superior, the new national standards were here to stay. About 90-95% of our English program matched the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

At Common Core English workshops, we both have heard teachers’ concerns, the major one being that the CCSS would dictate the books that teachers were to teach and students to read. When teachers saw, for example, that Alice Walker’s The Color Purple or William Faulkner’s The Sound and Fury were marked at the 4th grade reading level, they rightly objected to those books, among others, as ina...