Teachers anxious about Common Core reading suggestions

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

At Common Core English workshops, we both 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 suggested for fourth grade reading, they rightly objected to those books, among others, as inappropriate for elementary students. Though the supporters of CCSS asserted that the grade-level reading lists were merely suggestions, they have been unable to dispel the teachers' anxieties.

Second, many teachers feel that nonfiction books will replace fiction books in the new push to have K-12 students read more nonfiction, which is supposed to make up the majority of what students are to read.

As important as nonfiction may be, literature forms the foundation of our cultural values, heritage, and unity as a nation. Stories about heroes like Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, poetry by Robert Frost, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the Goosebump series, among so many other good books, shape the reading programs in the public schools. Replacing them with nonfiction is thought to undermine a well-rounded education that public schools have been giving students since 1893 when the curriculum for all high school subjects was first established.

Teachers have expressed concerns that the CCSS program has been a top-down model. With the Washington state standards, it was different - teachers across the state were involved with the creation of the standards from the beginning. Their voices counted then, but apparently not now.

Duane Pitts is a retired English teacher now living in Moses Lake. He taught English for 42 years - eight years in Valdosta, Ga; two years in Colfax; and 32 years in Odessa. As a retiree, he serving as a facilitator by helping teachers and principals learn about the new state teacher-principal evaluation project.