On the 1st I mentioned my concern about administrators in my district pushing non-fiction texts into Language Arts classrooms to an unwelcomed and unintended degree. This article by the two co-lead authors of the Common Core Standards affirms my assertions:
By high school, the Standards require that 70 percent of what students read be informational text, but the bulk of that percentage will be carried by non-ELA disciplines that do not study fictional texts. Said plainly, stories, drama, poetry, and other literature account for the majority of reading that students will do in the high school ELA classroom.
And:
The Standards in no way ask ELA teachers to abandon literature; instead, they require that students read demanding, high-quality fiction and demonstrate their ability to analyze such fiction.
We’ve been subjected to the same pressure here in Philadelphia. Since our district is nearly bankrupt and can’t buy new texts or materials, we still get to use our old literature books. What a relief.