Thank you for running this piece! Rather than be happy that kids are reading hundreds of pages of fiction and enthralled in novels like Hunger Games and Harry Potter, David Coleman (who never taught a day in his life) has arbitrarily mandated 50% "instructional texts" in K-5 and 75% thereafter. Ironically, Coleman goes on at great length about the importance of "critical thinking" and citing evidence in one's arguments, neither which he has provided in the case of these absurd quotas.

Of course fiction is worth teaching. We won't see any of the elite private schools cutting it from the curriculum because that would put students at a disadvantage when completing for elite colleges. If public schools continue to water down the "quality" of the literature taught we will begin to experience a "cultural disparity" in addition to the growing income disparity leaving the middle class in the lurch. What other country is willfully handicapping the potential of its public school students?

On the issue of the balance between non-fiction and fiction, perhaps we should consider the market as a corrective here. The common core theorists can walk into the young adult section of any major bookstore and measure the shelf footage allotted to fiction and non-fiction. The market is very clear on this. Fiction predominates by an overwhelming margin. If there were truly a demand wouldn't retailers have an interest in meeting it?

Ah, the market is a two edged sword reformers.

I attended NYC public schools graduating in 1968 and my three children attended NYC public schools.
My educational experience was much richer in comparison to what my kids were taught. I have a broader base of knowledge of literaature, poetry, art and music. We spent time on analyzing literature, memorizing poetry, singing, dancing, drawing and appreciating art and music. There were classes like woodworking and home economics that taught us life skills. Schools turned out well rounded students
who knew how to think whether they were headed to college or not.

That "critical thinking" kick that is the driving force behind the Core Curriculum, requires many things of students but all of these requirements hinges on experience and background knowledge. Kids by virtue of their age lack both.

If they are allowed to read more and increasingly more complex literature and diverse writings and not just academic literature but current event publications, news articles, journals, magazines, etc, they would gain background knowledge that will help them to think critically.

See it is a catch-22 situation: in order for kids to have the background knowledge to aid problem solving, we as teachers, have to expose them to a vast amount of information and the best way to do that is with a variety of reading material; even though reading research supports this concept, the curriculum does not. Hence, we limit and suck the joy out of reading and expect higher order thinking and good analytic writing from our kids. That is the equivalent of cementing their feet, clipping their wings and telling them to fly. It just don't work.

Tim,

I could not agree more that good English instruction involves grammar, vocabulary, and exposure to a wide range of writing assignments.

My son's public middle school requires two semesters of Creative Writing. One in 7th grade and another in 8th. He was also asked to write a memoir in humanities at the beginning of 7th grade - probably his 4th one during his pretty unremarkable 8 years of schooling.

Book reports? None. Essays about history? None. Current events? One power point presentation on the 2010 senate campaign analyzing two candidates' positions on three issues.

I love that he gets exposed to literature. He even got through most of Dracula on his own this spring.

My fear is no one is teaching him much of anything about expository writing. And this is in a 'high-performing' district, so I can only imagine what goes on in Cortona or Jackson Heights.

  Reading literature is a learned skill, learning to read between the lines as the cliché goes, learning about people, the subtext of their culture, values, and emotions as they transitions into intellectual discourse.  Often, it is not appreciated at the time it is taught.  It may merely entertain but not instruct.  But for many, it lingers and, in time, they soon realize with practice and experience what is said and unsaid in the great works of literary fiction.  Like algebra, it teaches you to think in a certain way. But unlike algebra, it enlivens your empathy for other characters and people.  If it touches you, you never see life the same way again

Yes, it's absolutely horrendous that fiction is not highly valued by the architects of the Common Core, i.e. non-educators Bill Gates/David Coleman, and that by virtue of his wealth, Gates gets to dictate education policy across the country. Look at what's on his "Books" page -see any classics there? http://www.thegatesnotes.com/...

People should be permitted to buy our government, yet we have many corporate profiteers, from both sides of the aisle, who have joined together in doing just that, including the Walton/Gates-Duncan alliance which supports ALEC agendas, including privatizing education across the country.

The 99% really need to wake up and speak out, before the 1% destroy public education altogether and turn everyone into mindless drones who will be happy to work at Wal-Mart etc. and not complain about their low incomes and lack of labor unions.

On another note, as with most college professors, I have had to address writing issues so much over the years that I feel like I'm an English teacher, even though my expertise is in other areas. Of course, there are a number of issues inherent in this matter, but one irks me more than others, so I have a request.

Can I please ask all of you real English teachers to make sure that students learn and use paragraphing? I've been teaching in higher ed for decades and I am just so tired of getting papers composed of a single paragraph --even though my assignment instructions clearly state that students must use paragraphing to separate topics and include multiple paragraphs in their writing. Often, these single paragraph papers go on for pages. It's just something that has not been ingrained in them, I guess. (I teach online now, so my students are living across the globe, but most are Americans who were educated in the US.) Thanks for whatever you can do to help!

I'm just starting "common core" but I sure know they have taken the fun out of teaching. I miss my literature):

Adam Jones in Evoking Genocide: Scholars and Activists Describe the Works That Shaped Their Lives interviews 57 scholars of genocide and human rights activitsts. 74% of the texts that prompted them to care about genocide were literary or fine arts, and 26% were informational. In education, if we want students to care about anything worth caring about, it seems we need to do the reverse of what David Coleman says.

There will be less multiple choice on CC tests. Now, students will have short answer (gasp), and extended response (choke). When I taught in Louisiana, that's how their LEAP tests were already set up. This way students had to explain their reasoning. I think it's great! HOWEVER, I do not think that taking literature out of the schools is great. In my county, we made sure that the students are exposed to both fiction and non-fiction selections. My students will also have free selective reading to do. This is where they can read anything they want on their level and respond to it openly. The only time I will "require" a certain genre, is when they are doing research or that is the area we need to "focus" on more for mastery. Other than that, leisure reading will be just that!

I use spelling lists and vocabulary as grades. There are no choices in that one. I also require that by December, all spelling tests are done in cursive (pass out)! I know it's a dying skill, but how else will students, when they receive a check in adulthood, cash said check. Banks are taking manuscript signatures for checks, loans, etc. So, we're failing our children!

What also needs to happen is more parental support for education. If parents (not saying it's not out there) become more supportive, children are more successful! PERIOD!

The Common Core Standards do support narrative writing. Look under the "College and Career Readiness" section, number three: "Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences." (http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai... the "Range of Writing." It includes creative writing under standard 11. All of the number three and number 11 standards focus on creative writing. I'm pointing this out, because the activity you describe and threw out sounds great. This is Common Core Standards support for you to get it back in to your syllabus. Also see page 41 "Range of Text Types." Stories, Drama, and Poetry are three of the four. And under "Informational Texts" there is a clear explanation that indicates most of this reading should or could be covered in the other content courses.

I teach H.S., and the push to teach more non-fiction seems to be coming from the administration and QR results/suggestions. Don't fault the standards--ARM yourself with them. List them on your unit and lesson plans and be prepared to defend your fabulous activities with them. I copy and paste every standard I can possibly relate to my lessons on each of my plans. A copy of the standards is on my desk at all times, and I carry it to my meetings with admin.

One of the very best units I taught last year included both fiction and non-fiction on human trafficking. It opened a new line of discussion not only about techniques, but why an author would choose one over the other, and how a reader approaches each genre. They could choose to write their final paper in whatever genre they chose. Grading has never been more fun.

The CCS by themselves mean very little if we also don't do something to make curriculum more standardized. As the poorest students are the ones who tend to move the most frequently during the school year they get lost because there is no consistency in the curriculum even within a district. I think E.D. HIrsch's ideas of a common curriculum need more scrutiny.

No, no, no, no.

Mr. Clifford is simply ill-informed about the contents of the Common Core State Standards. The 70% informational text requirement is explicitly NOT for English classes, but rather for ALL of a student's reading ACROSS ALL SUBJECTS. "The percentages on the table reflect the sum of student reading, not just reading in ELA settings. Teachers of senior English classes, for example, are not required to devote 70 percent of reading to informational texts. Rather, 70 percent of student reading across the grade should be informational." Read it for yourself: http://www.corestandards.org/..., page 5, footnote 1.

Suggested informational texts for Kindergarten do not include "How Factories Work". They do include "My Five Senses" by Aliki, "Hearing", "Sight", "Smell", "Taste", and "Touch" by Maria Rius, "My Amazing Body" by Path Thomas, "Truck" by Donald Crews, "I Read Signs" by Tana Hoban, "What Do You Do with a Tail Like This?" by Steve Jenkins, and "Amazing Whales!" by Sarah Thomson (pages 32 and 33). No specific text is required, but what is required is that "at a curricular or instructional level, within and across grade levels, texts need to be selected around topics or themes that generate knowledge and allow students to study those topics or themes in depth". (p. 32)

If Mr. Clifford somehow find this objectionable, that is his prerogative, and that would be a fine topic for a SchoolBook posting: perhaps he has some keen insight into the dangers of studying topics in too much depth at too tender an age. But SchoolBook should not be granting him a forum to opine about what he merely imagines the Common Core State Standards to say, especially when his imaginary version is in so many respects utterly at odds with the actual Standards.

I think your son is fortunate. Creative writing is the exception these days, not the rule, and it's about to become more scarce than ever with the advent of the Common Core.

Exposition can be taught by all teachers. There's certainly no reason that a history teacher can't teach persuasion, for example. Creative writing and literature are mostly the purview of English teachers, so to take that away from us and the "arts" in language arts vanishes.

Matthew, did you mean to say your son's diet was 90% fiction? You said, "90% non-fiction" - 90% non-fiction would mean that he's reading a ton of expository texts (a non-fiction section of a library usually contains biography, poetry, current events, magazines, encyclopedias, textbooks, dictionaries, reference, cookbooks, books about "real" or "true" things in the world, technical manuals, ...). Yet, you seem to be complaining that your child isn't exposed to enough non-fiction. So... what are you saying? Additionally, I wouldn't assume or imagine anything about what I'm guessing you are implying are "low performing" schools (Cortona and Jackson Heights). Those schools probably teach nothing other than the tested curriculum as they are probably under some sort mandates for school improvement.

Nail meet hammer. Well done, Tim Clifford.

25 years of teaching English literature and I have come to this sad state of affairs. Used to be I loved teaching because I had a measure of autonomy in selecting the books I taught. Now the state of NY (with the blinkered assistance of the administration at my high school) has seen to it that I am now a repleacable cog in a synchronized machine.

Of course, as this article points out, the devolution of Language Arts English instruction has been underway for decades. For instance, I doubt that any English teacher in my department can diagram a compound sentence (and no high school student would be familiar with the term 'parse'). It's not their fault, though, grammar hasn't been taught past the 6th grade since the farsighted folks at the NCTE banned grammar instruction back in the 1970's. (I was taught grammar through the 9th grade, but that was before the ‘reforms’ took effect.)

The state does not want literate, cultured citizens. It wants drones capable of performing tasks in the technocracy they think awaits graduates graduates, which is why idiotic multiple choice tests have become the new norm replacing written responses. Shakespeare will soon become irrelevant unless his works can be reduced to fill-in-the-blank and matching 'tests'.

The dumbing down of American public education has been noted since at least the 1980’s. The seminal Carnegie Commission Report, “A Nation at Risk” was published in 1983. It received considerable attention and the time and since then has been collecting dust in the lost books archive. The simple fact is that education is not a priority in the US. Know-nothing teapartiers and libertarians call for the elimination of the Dept. of Education and the ‘privatization’ of the public schools as if corporations could be more efficient and effective. And one has to wonder why David Coleman hasn’t joined their ranks.

We must remember that if you read those quotes closely, the percentages (which are just plain silly) apply to all subjects areas within a particular grade level...not just English class. English teachers are not solely responsible but that is the message that seems to be presented. We must continue to include quality fiction and narrative within our English curriculum and promote students' independent reading choices.

Another point that is glossed over is that the name is the Common Core Learning Standards and not the Common Core Curriculum. These are skills (again an absurd notion to try to fit our diverse American student population into such a small box in order to prepare them for the global economy)and not a list of what is to be taught. Teachers must push back against the companies profiting from this ed reform and be wary of what our state ed departments put forth as 'resources'. In NY they are called 'curriculum modules'...a bit too Orwellian for my tastes.

Teachers must speak up, question and push their way into the table even if we haven't been invited.

The non fiction advocates fail to realize that the most memorable things people read are fiction. We can learn a lot about the Depression, for instance, by reading Steinbeck, or about medieval life, by reading Ken Follett. One more thing--history is not just facts, it's also narrative. Not all auto biographies are loaded with historical truth. Most "histories" are narrative as well, hence are not necessaily historical fact.

The writer is too kind. Most NYC elementary schools don't even teach spelling let alone test for it. They ar slowly bringing back a bit -- a weekly spelling word list -- but it's not emphasized. Maybe spelling is not on the standardized multiple-choice tests?

Since when did literary analysis cease to be critical thinking? Bah, humbug!

Personally, I like the common core standards and its a great first step toward all of us being on the same page. The amount of fiction v. non-fiction can be negotiated over time. I agree with the need to read fiction, though these days it seems too much of that means fantasy and science fiction, since that is what students enjoy reading on their own. I like the idea of students reading about fictional characters but prefer they be written in the context of the real world. Young people and adults can too easily describe the various powers and worlds of vampires, wizards, and aliens while struggling to describe the life and diverse worlds of Ancient, Medieval, or even modern, humans.

The multiple choice quiz that featured David Coleman, Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee as possible answers illustrates how far from teaching the policymakers in education are today. Oh, if only they were characters to satirize the idea of fact based education for success.
The significance of literature for was discussed in the NYTimes article by Annie Paul Murray, "The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction". Reading fiction, " is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective."
I teach literature, and my students make connections to the real word (Macbeth to Afghan Warlords; Frankenstein to the science of cloning) in my class everyday. Literature helps my students make sense of the world; they do not need to suffer under a despot, but they can experience a corrupt political system in Animal Farm and the heat of the Dust Boel in The Grapes of Wrath. They can also learn about the dangers of child labor in Dicken's Oliver Twist. See how Dickens's literature demonstrates the power of fiction as a means of providing facts as well?

Whether it's the Common Core, or some other state standard, school administrators and policy makers must recognize two important realities: children who are allowed to choose reading material that interests them read better; and children who frequently write stories tend to develop better critical thinking skills than their peers. Creative writing aids language development at all levels: grammar, vocabulary, phonology, and discourse. It requires learners to manipulate the language in interesting and demanding ways in the attempt to express personal concepts. Much of the school curriculum focuses on the left side of the brain, the practical, logical side. Creative writing summons the right side of the brain, with more emphasis on feelings, physical sensations, and intuition. As art, drama, and music classes are cut from the school day, any opportunity to develop creativity should be welcomed. Writing creatively also affords students of different learning-styles the chance to excel in self-expression.
We should do all we can to encourage free voluntray reading and creative writing.
Dan Ward
editor, www.languagemagazine.com

To the many people who are bemoaning the removal of fiction/literature from the curriculum: The Common Core does not reduce the reading of literature to 0%. Literature shifts from 50% to 45% to 30% from elementary to high school. No one anywhere is advocating Gradgrind's perspective which implies 0% literature. Furthermore anyone who thinks that creative non-fiction and engaging articles and books about history, linguistics, science, psychology, and a host of other fact-based genres are not interesting needs to broaden their understanding of what a good book is.

I think literature is necessary, only because it is fun to read about things that you never thought of reading. i also think that it is good to teach it because it helps you understand things from a different perspective. I also think it is necessary to teach it. No matter what people say literature is important and everybody needs it, if we didn't need literature people in the world's grammar would not be as good as it is now.

To throw a cog in the wheel of this discussion, where does poetry writing fall in the common core? I've looked and cannot find it. Apparently, American students do not need to express themselves!