Fordham and I have very different conceptions of the discipline of English, so it is not surprising that I disagree with their criteria for evaluating English standards, and I won't belabor the specifics now. However, I would note that their actual commentary on the draft Common Core Standards for English is consistently and uniformly negative, despite periodic injections of half-hearted praise like "Overall, the content and rigor of most of the core standards is reasonable (within the limits described above) but..." Nonetheless, Fordham gives the standards a "B." What a sham.
I'd also note that in the one place where the text of a CCSSO standard is directly compared to that of a standard from a well-regarded US state document, the results are as devastating as the many examples I've shown on this blog. They notably take the step of not comparing the Common Core Standards as a whole to the standards of other states or countries, but to the frameworks for tests: NAEP, PISA and TIMSS. This lets them slide out of an apples to apples comparison with a high quality standards document like those from Indiana or Ottawa, which the Common Core Standards simply can't stand up to (or to point out that high-achieving countries don't have standards anything like what Fordham advocates for).
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