Reading & Writing Grounded in Evidence
Shifting away from today’s emphasis on narrative writing (in response to de-contextualized prompts), the standards place a premium on students writing to sources, i.e., using evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. Rather than asking students questions they can answer from their prior knowledge or experience, the standards expect students to answer questions that depend on their having actually read the text.
Likewise, the reading standards focus on students’ ability to read closely and grasp information, arguments, ideas and details based on text evidence. Students should be able to answer a range of text-dependent questions, questions in which the answers require no information from outside the text, but instead require inferences based on careful attention to the text.