Tennessee Approves Common Core Standards

I'm worried--Tennessee's wholehearted approval of the national Common Core Standards does not bode well for our efforts to get more young adult literature in the high school English classroom, and to center today's teenager in curricular decisions. The standards committee has suggested titles for each grade level, and we know what that means--teachers will feel like they have to teach/use these titles because the assumption is "they're on the test." The first common core standards tests will be in 2014-2015, so I'm sure we'll see the following titles in Knox County curriculum to come (notice the year of publication for each text, and predominance of White, Western canon):

Grade 6-8 texts:
•Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1869)
•The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876)
•“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (1915)
•The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper (1973)
•Dragonwings by Laurence Yep (1975)
•Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor (1976)

Grade 9-12 texts:
•The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1592)
•“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)
•“The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe (1845)
•“The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry (1906)
•The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
•Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
•The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)

Grade 11-12
•“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1820)
•Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1848)
•“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson (1890)
•The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
•Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
•A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (1959)
•The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)

Can I just say: the folks who dictate curricular policy--now at national levels--are so out of touch with today's adolescents.

The Common Core Standards Initiative website states that three things were considered when suggesting texts: complexity, quality, and range.

To judge "quality," the standards commission says they chose texts of "recognized value" (recognized by whom?? who values?). They furhter, "From the pool of submissions gathered from outside contributors, the work group selected classic or historically significant texts as well as contemporary works of comparable literary merit,cultural significance, and rich content." Historically significant how? to whom? Why no contemporary young adult literature? Why no texts that present postmodern structures/text features? Texts that include images, digital media, etc?

I mean, when I look at these titles and think THIS IS REPRESENTATIVE OF US, NATIONALLY, I feel invisible. I'm not anywhere in this list of literature, either through interest, or relation to experience, etc. I'm not saying literature has to be immediately relevant to me to matter, or that this literature is not historically significant to some, but I am saying that the gals in Little Women, Tom Sawyer, Emily Dickinson, and Jay Gatsby are not my (ONLY) EXPERIENCE or REALITY as a White, female, Southern American. And I don't appreciate a group of seemingly well-minded policymakers assuming they can decide what literature matters to and speaks for me or my history!!! Do you feel me? (If I were asked what American literature speaks to me, it would certainly include Dorothy Allison, Bobbie Ann Mason, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, and Lorrie Moore, with some Arrested Development and Dirty South rap playing in the background).

The commission says even less about "range," explaining they tried to "ensure that the samples presented in each band represented as broad a range of sufficiently complex, high quality texts as possible." Where's the range? in consideration of reader ability? in consideration of text genre?

To gauge "complexity," the commission explains they considered 1)a quantitative piece (reading level, which we know is usually a measure of word length, not comprehension ability), 2) a qualitative piece, which measures comprehension?? (how are they determining this??), and 3) "reader variables (such as motivation, knowledge, and experiences), and task variables (such as purpose and the complexity generated by the task assigned and the questions posed)."

Really??? I am very interested to learn how these folks are assessing reader motivation and readers' experiences (looking at a diverse range of readers??), as well as the purposes readers bring to reading literature...if they've looked at any "real" research they would know that NONE of the literature selections they've suggested fit what teens like to read and choose to read when given opportunities to choose. And isn't choice part of motivation and purpose?? of encouraging a life-long joy of reading? (No. I'm increasingly convinced the point of school reading instruction is to pass a (the ACT) test. I haven't read the more "detailed explanation" provided in Appendix A at the website, so maybe more of this will make sense once I do (but somehow I doubt it).

Alfie Kohn weighs in on national standards here