Quick Reax: Common Core ELA Final

Each draft has been superficially better than the previous and eliminated the most incongruous boners. They have assented to elevating narrative to one of the three required types of writing. All of the drafts, however, have been shackled by the craptastic College- and Career- Readiness standards, which is probably the worst conceived organizing framework in the history of ELA standards. That's impossible to fully overcome.

A full text search for "rhetoric" illustrates some of the remaining issues:

Speaking and Listening 3, CCR: Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric. (p. 22 & 48)

Reading Informational Text 6, grade 9-10: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose. (p. 40)

Reading Informational Text 6, grade 11-12: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text. (p. 40)

Reading Informational Text 9, grade 11-12: Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes, and rhetorical features. (p. 40)

Speaking and Listening 3, grade 9-10: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence. (p.50)

Speaking and Listening 3, grade 11-12: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used. (p.50)

Note on range and content of student language use: At the same time, (students) must come to appreciate that language is at least as much a matter of craft as of rules and be able to choose words, syntax, and punctuation to express themselves and achieve particular functions and rhetorical effects. (p. 51)

OK, English teacher, according to this set of standards, which asserts the primacy of argument, what are you supposed to teach about rhetoric?