CCSS - Standards, Not Curriculum

What I found interesting about the chapter titled "The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12," which is from the book titled CCSS: Origins, Goals, Challenges, is the fact that the standards (and even the notion of how to address and define standards) are a whirling machine, always changing and re-orienting themselves. The struggle between federal and state standards, the differences from state to state, and the challenges therein, create a complicated whirlwind of politicking, coercion, resistance, and cooperation--a process that seems to be antithetical to the means it aims to achieve. It appears that Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are the latest and most effective (considering widespread use in the States) in this long train of reinventing the wheel, as it were, but how long before the work that so many have put into these standards is discarded and the wheel turns again, finding new ways to complicate matters in the name of blanketed inclusion and ironic efficiency? Now, I don't mean to imply that inclusion or efficiency are negative things--quite the contrary. My issue stems from the fact that we don't stick with one "machined part" long enough before trying to dissect it and find a better way to accomplish the same task. And while it may be a byproduct of scientific inquiry (the standards we hold most dear are research-based, after all, and the scientific method demands and necessitates redefinition of observations) as well as a byproduct of the simple march of time (politician A enacts policy, policy is put into effect for a short term before politician B takes his place and enacts a new policy, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum), but it seems to me that we owe our species the apt investment it deserves.

I of course imply that education is the most important investment a people can make into itself. If we do not hold education to be the positive feedback loop that it is and tend it just so, then we are remiss in our duties to future generations. If CCSS is the best we have, then so be it. But when the next iteration of some form of educational standards rears its inevitable head, perhaps more care should be poured into its creation, with more cooperation and less politicking, than generations before; simply because we owe it to ourselves and our children and our children's children.

To clarify, I don't dislike CCSS. I only wish that it met more needs of more varieties of children (every child is different, you know) while simultaneously holding all students to an acceptable standard. And that may be an idealistic pipe dream, but even so, we must strive for that dream.