'Laying Bare of Questions Which Have Been Hidden by Answers': The English Language Arts Standards of the Common Core, K-5

The authors question the answer the national Common Core State Standards (CCSS, 2010) claims. The questions center on the validity of the new standardized tests based on the CCSS and teachers' evaluations being tied to student test scores on flawed tests. The proposed tests on the CCSS will position children as deficient, and will not recognize the Funds of Knowledge children and their families bring to the educational transaction. The developers of the proposed new tests seem particularly uninformed on much research of how children learn new vocabulary. The authors question the literary theory (New Criticism) and learning theory (information processing) that undergird the CCSS, which exclude theories and research (transactional theory, critical literacy, Funds of Knowledge, arts-based research) that could be beneficial, especially to children of color and the poor. The authors question the validity of dictating percentages of informational and literary texts, and the lack of emphasis on the emotional lives of children (the word "analysis" appears 94 times in the CCSS). They question whether the CCSS are truly internationally benchmarked when children are not biologically nor developmentally capable of some of the demands in the early grades, and impose standards not shared by Finland and China that may make American students less competitive, not more.