Some Quick Thoughts on the Reading Standards for Informational Texts

• As ususal, the 11-12th grade standards seem to be shooting for a higher level of rigor than the College and Career Ready Standards.
• Particularly at the high school level, it is all about evaluating logical arguments and evidence, but very weak on other aspects of rhetoric (logos, ethos, pathos anyone? Hello?).
• The organization of this thing, with each of the CCRS threads repeated for four different kinds of reading, is absurd, idiosyncratic, redundant, and incompatible of the "fewer" aspect of their design goals.
• They literally could have made "Reading and writing arguments" or, if you want to be snooty, "rhetoric," the single unitary standard in this entire document, and the only assessment you would need would be to read arguments of a sufficient complexity and write a sufficiently strong argument in response. That's really all they care about at the high school and CCRS level, and I think it'd be vastly better than this mess.