amused1. Anything can be said to be CCSS aligned. Yep. I am seeing this more and more. Even an innocent posting yesterday about good nonfiction authors slipped and talked about alignment in exactly the wrong way. It identified authors whose books are CCSS aligned instead of authors who write books whose works might be utilized with CCSS standards. There are two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT things, folks. I do know there are some out there writing specifically to standards (I hesitate to call them authors, though) but nonfiction can be tied to standards and used to teach skills and cover standards. A second observation: it is amazing to see where CCSS alignment shows up these days. I was reading an ARC and the inset from the publisher had a string of CCSS standards for the book. UGH! Why do I want and or need this? Teachers can readily address skills, strategies, and standards without having a list provided for them, thank you. Of course, those would be the teachers who actually READ.
2. Politics can derail standards. I must admit, I did not come to the same conclusion as the author of this piece who noted, "If implementation is paused, what happens? Teachers are left in the lurch, not knowing what to teach, states are unsure about the waivers they received to No Child Left Behind's requirements and a year or two of children's education is lost while leaders develop a Plan B." TEACHERS ARE LEFT IN THE LURCH NOT KNOWING WHAT TO TEACH. Read that again. TEACHERS ARE LEFT IN THE LURCH NOT KNOWIING WHAT TO TEACH. We must be living in Stepford, right? Unless we are programmed, we do not know what to do. Help! Help! Someone, quick, give me something o teach. I have no clue what to do without some manual, blueprint, list, etc. What would happen is standards are derailed? What if we had to return to the good old days of NCLB (insert sarcasm here)? What, heaven forbid, if we permitted teachers to return to the "anchors" of yesteryear? Would the economy fail? Would unemployment rise? Would the graduation rate plummet? Oh wait, this is already happening, right?
There are certainly some complications that come about as we move further lock step down the CCSS path or fall headlong down the CCSS rabbit hole (whichever you prefer in terms of metaphors). I see the complications as losing readers, starving imaginations, and creating graduates who perform for assessments and not anywhere else. Complications, indeed.