The English standards could fairly be seen as a Trojan Horse for government propaganda.
One of the big changes that they impose is to require a majority of the material studied to be informational rather than literary. That ‘informational’ reading spans history, science, etc., and is generally set at the state level. The states are banding into various large consortia, however, with up to 25 states so far in each consortium. Also, there is a dogmatic push to study only the actual material in these informational texts, rather than to invite or allow critical reading through augmentation with external sources.
Thus, more than half of students’ time studying English has become devoted to the narrow reading of government provided ‘informational’ texts on environmentalism and other typically slanted documents. It truly does take propaganda in schools to unprecedented levels.
Also, though there’s all sorts of justification for these standards assuring that all students achieve at the prescribed levels, they also provide ‘scaffolding’ such that students reading way below the level of the texts can be helped to limp along through the process even though they’ve not necessarily achieved mastery at any level.
They might be seen that way, but they're not written that way.
As I said in a previous post, the standards present broad ideas that should be mastered, but do not go into detail about the actual curriculum (the way in which the standards are taught).
The point I've tried to make, not very successfully, is that the standards themselves are not a great concern so far as education goes. For the most part, individual teachers select the vehicles that will be used to teach the material. So, for example, if a teacher says he's assigning a sexually charged novel because it's required by the standard, that's a lie, and he should be held accountable.
I should have included this in my previous post... you are absolutely correct in regards to scaffolding. It's a major complaint that I have with my school and with education in general.
Since NCLB, students are shoved upwards and onwards with little regard to what they may have learned. In the schools I'm familiar with, the resources that are dedicated to "reluctant learners" dwarf those allocated to honors and AP students. The message has been received: Get them through any way you have to, but DO NOT mess with graduation rates.