CCSS: for better or for worse?

As far as the CCSS themselves go: not ideal. Having sat in on department meetings where high school English teachers gather for hours only to blindly pick the standards apart, I have witnessed the pain. But I've also witnessed these great teachers coming together to really take the standards and flip them inside out in order to make them work based on the direction and structure of their class, and their students' needs. If you've ever seen them before, you know that they look suuuuper interesting and quite thorough... Exhibit A:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.10: 

By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 9-10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

(Apparently the writers thought one sentence per standard is enough for us.) One teacher may approach this with an open mind. Some might follow the standard to the letter and probably bore the hell out of his/her students in the process. It doesn't seem like the standards are meant to be executed as literally as they come, but I can't say I would know any better if I were just seeing them for the first time. This begs the question: how are teachers being prepped for this (if they are at all)? The CCSS, as some of you have already mentioned, have been on the radar for years now, yet we've spent minutes in passing addressing them in our classes. I'm glad and excited for Teaching to Exceed, but if I didn't have it, I'd be completely clueless as to how to tackle this bear. I can't say it'll be the holy grail of insight on the CCSS, but it's a pretty darn good start, don't you all think?

As far as the ways of implementing the CCSS goes according to Richard Beach, so far, it's pretty right on the money. Beach manages to turn the standards-- which, at face value, can be the ultimate classroom buzzkill-- into the kinds of things that I wish to do with teaching. Instead of seeing them as a dreaded guidebook, Beach gives us a fresh look, as he shows us their potential in generating meaningful experiences; building strong communities; and, most importantly, designing curricula that is student interest-driven. His read-between-the-lines interpretation of the CCSS also gives us an idea of how to actually go about doing the interpretations ourselves and how far we can really stretch a meager one-sentence standard...

On the political scale, I'd kindly excuse myself from that conversation, but I will say that it will be interesting to see the research and studies to come... On a potentially weird note, if anyone is a conspiracy fanatic such as myself, apparently there has been some buzz about the CCSS being a Segway (did my ipad really just capitalize that?) into a national curriculum, with some states even having attempted to opt out of the system, program, whatever you want to call it, in reaction to this rumor... For some of you that may seem pretty farfetched, but these kinds of things get me thinking. If in some way, shape, or form the CCSS yields some positive results, couldn't that be the next step?

In summation, I think there are certainly two sides to the standards. The cons are obvious:

1. We don't want our students to be held to standards, especially when policy makers could never dream of a set of standards that would address the needs of millions of different minds, personalities, learning styles, etc.

2. The standards are the same state-wide. I'm sorry.. Englewood, Illinois isn't the same as Barrington, Illinois.

3. The figure-it-out-yourselves nature of it all.

The cons:

1. The standards may or may not be purposely created vague to allow us to really do a lot with them, and Beach shows us that potential.

2. They're not really a "bad" set of standards, and I can definitely see myself using some of them as a general framework or basis for a lesson or unit.

Lastly, to anyone who adores the classics:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/30/new-age-education-fuzzy-math-and-less-fiction/