Originally Posted by Aufilia
None of this is actually factual. These are common misconceptions you see quoted on Facebook and in blogs that are myths.

The common core doesn't prescribe particular texts or particular passages to be read, and certainly doesn't suggest that students read only or mainly excerpts. The standards do contain SAMPLE texts which are excerpts, but these are meant only to help teachers better gauge the level of material indicated by particular standards.
Some are reading common core STANDARDS only, others are reading and taking into account "all of their supporting components" (as described by the U.S. Department of Education's 15-page document, "Race to the Top Program Executive Summary", dated November 2009, and available online at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/executive-summary.pdf.)

The document mentions that standards are not stand-alone when it states, "... developing a rollout plan for the standards together with all of their supporting components;" (emphasis added). Interested parents may read the document for information on "all of their supporting components".

Shift in assessments and shifts in curriculum are prescribed.

For example, changes in the SAT (topic of this thread) may support "... aligning high school exit criteria and college entrance requirements with the new standards and assessments".

The shifts in curriculum including emphasizing shorter texts and passages, and the statements 'The Common Core State Standards require a greater focus on informational text in elementary school...'and "The standards call for elementary curriculum materials to be recalibrated to reflect a mix of 50 percent literary and 50 percent informational text" are found in the various publisher's criteria links here and here, which were found by following links from the official CCSS page here. These are not myths.

Please keep in mind that the changes in the SAT are intended to be responsive to the changes in schooling due to following common core.

The publisher's criteria reminds us: "Reading well means gaining the maximum insight or knowledge possible from each source." Interested parents may wish to read the common core links well.

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Also, the ELA standards account for much of the dread "instructional text" to be read in non-ELA classes (like science or social studies).
Some may find this comforting, others may find this to be scope creep or tentacles of common core moving beyond the agreed-upon ELA and Math to encompass every subject. Interested parents may wish to see the information in the FAQs on the common core website (http://www.corestandards.org/resources/frequently-asked-questions) which includes links to:
- Science standards being developed (http://www.nextgenscience.org/),
- World Language standards being developed (http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Aligning_CCSS_Language_Standards_v6.pdf)
- Art standards being developed (http://www.arteducators.org/news/national-coalition-for-core-arts-standards-nccas) broken link