Adopted by 46 states, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) present a vision of what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century and call for all students, including English learners, to develop critical reading skills necessary for a deep understanding of complex texts, and critical writing skills to write about those texts. This article…

Draws on classroom observations, interviews, and writing portfolios to contend that competing demands in modern classrooms can lead to environments that sabotage the teaching of argumentative and persuasive writing. Concludes that the epistemology fostered by classroom talk and other activities was inimical to the complex rhetoric the teacher was…