The Common Core Standards are fine. Indeed, they are more focused on reasoning, argumentation, and collaboration than were the old standards. The problem with standards is not standards as such, but standards getting trapped in a system of testing that advantages publishers and politicians more than children and families. Aside from this problem, though, there is another deep problem that bears on the very nature of language and on the important notion of “equal opportunity to learn” (Moss, Pullin, Gee, & Haertel 2007).