To see how the Common Core standards play out in practice, let’s look at two subsets of children with cognitive disabilities: those with language impairments and those with autism. Let’s look at eighth grade in particular, and at two of the English language arts standards for reading and literature, beginning with R-L 8.2:

Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

This, like all Common Core goals, is rather schematic. So perhaps there’s a way to tweak things in line with the Students with Disabilities document. Perhaps one could adjust the material by using a simplified or alternative text at the student’s actual reading level.

But probably not. As additional Common Core documents explain, the texts for the different grade levels must be at a certain grade-appropriate level of verbal complexity. The Common Core Myths vs. Facts page notes, “the Standards require certain critical content for all students, including… America’s Founding Documents, foundational American literature, and Shakespeare.” And an appendix explains that sample texts, which include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for eighth grade, “exemplify the level of complexity and quality that the Standards require all students in a given grade band to engage with.” So, while one might supplement a text, say, with glossaries and storyboards, one can’t adjust the text itself to match the student’s reading level.

Further showing what special needs students are up against are the sample tasks. For R-L 8.2 above, we have:

Students summarize the development of the morality of Tom Sawyer in Mark Twain’s novel of the same name and analyze its connection to themes of accountability and authenticity by noting how it is conveyed through characters, setting, and plot.

Now imagine a 14-year-old who comprehends language at a fourth-grade level. What combination of assistive technology and supplemental material could possibly provide sufficient access to how accountability and authenticity play out in the complex paragraphs of Tom Sawyer? What, other than years of remediation in reading comprehension, could get her through highly relevant sentences like this one, in which Tom takes a lashing from Schoolmaster Dobbins for an infraction actually committed by Becky Thatcher?

Inspired by the splendor of his own act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flaying that even Mr. Dobbins had ever administered; and also received with indifference the added cruelty of a command to remain two hours after school should be dismissed—for he knew who would wait for him outside till his captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as loss, either.

What, short of simplifying the text or spoon-feeding its meaning to her, will it take for our language-impaired 14-year-old to grasp this 67-word sentence, with its complex syntax, words like “flaying,” “indifference,” and an outdated sense of “should,” and the inference needed to grasp the contextual meaning of “captivity”? One can only imagine how tough things become once the student gets to Shakespeare—one author that the standards appear to mandate.