As forty-six states and the District of Columbia implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), questions abound regarding implementation, including the implications for curriculum and pedagogy. In this report, researchers analyze what texts English teachers assign their students and the instructional techniques they used in the classroom. The FDR Group was commissioned to conduct a nationwide survey of public school English, language arts, and reading teachers in an effort to determine what texts are being assigned to students, some of the ways teachers teach the English language arts, and whether the complexity of assignments changes as Common Core implementation ramps up. This is the first of two surveys, intended to establish a baseline in 2012 that can be compared with the findings of a similar survey undertaken in 2015. Specifically, this survey addressed four basic issues: (1) the extent to which teachers assign sufficiently complex texts to their students; (2) the mix of informational and literary texts that teachers use for instruction, including how current choices align with the exemplar texts presented by the Common Core; (3) how instructional texts are selected and the role they play in instructional planning; and (4) teachers' opinions of and familiarity with the CCSS, as well as their school's efforts to implement the standards. The report begins with a summary of the study's methods and sample, followed by a discussion of what changes in instruction the CCSS portend, key findings relative to the four issues noted above, and implications for educators. [This report was written with Ann Duffett. Foreword and summary written by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee.]