Who edited the Common Core Standards (if they were edited at all)

While writing my previous post, I happened to grab an  11th grade Common Core ELA Standard in order to illustrate the fact that rSAT  is not in fact perfectly aligned with Common Core. The standard is worded as follows: Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis. I initially just glanced over the standard (I had selected  it at random to make a point), but when I read it carefully, I noticed something interesting about its construction namely, that it doesnt really say what it intends to say. In fact, it falls prey to  a very common error: the misplaced modifier. If you consider what the standard is literally saying, the  placement of the phrase  to  provide a complex analysis after  the word  another  implies that the central ideas of the text are responsible for providing complex analyses. That, however, is ridiculous; the central ideas of a text cannot provide a complex analysis of themselves.  Clearly, it is the students who must be able to perform that task! To make that fact clear,  the standard should been written this way: Determine two or more central ideas of a text, analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another, and (or: in order to)  provide a complex analysis of those ideas. The non-essential clause links the information after the comma to the information before, thus providing a clear sequence of  what students are responsible for doing (determine, analyze,  provide). Or better yet, it could have been written  this way: Provide a complex analysis of a text by determining two or more of its central ideas and analyzing their development, including how they interact and build on one another over the course of the text. Furthermore, because  interact and  build are followed by different prepositions (on vs.  with), the inclusion of  on  but not  with is also questionable. For  maximum clarity, the phrase should read  interact  with and build  on. The second preposition cannot apply to the first verb that is,  it is incorrect to say  interact on one  another. So the standard should really read like this: Provide a complex analysis of a text by determining two or more of its central ideas and analyzing their development, including how they interact  with  and build on one another over the course of the text.   Now the standard at least  says what it intends to say. This is not only a pedantic grammar exercise, nor is it just a flimsy jab by someone whos desperate to attack the awesomeness that is Common Core but  cant think of anything better to talk about than grammar. (Look, maybe a few  grammar experts like you care about this stuff, but its pretty clear  what the thing means. Lets not get so bogged down in the details that we  lose sight of  whats  really important here preparing students for college and career readiness.) This is about people shaping  educational policy who have absolutely no business doing so. In almost any other  situation, this type of sloppiness could be overlooked; however,  these standards have consequences  for millions upon millions (upon millions) of students.   It does not seem unreasonable to ask that English  standards, of all things, be written by people who know how to make relatively simple sentences say what they are intended to  say. Theres too much at stake for jumbled language  to be acceptable.   This, however, is what people who do not actually teach  English, or know that much about writing well period, think  an ELA standard should look like. Theyre trying to sound sophisticated and knowledgeable (phony gravitas, as one Yale education professor  perfectly put  it), but the  result is muddled and awkward.   No one   no one who hasnt mastered these types of basic constructions should be  allowed so much influence over what goes in ELA classrooms across the United States.   Besides,  if even the people (person?) who wrote these standards actually did know better, they still  did not have  their Very Important Document properly edited, either because they were too eager to  have it finalized and approved; too lazy to bother; or too arrogant to think that that having it checked was even necessary. Most likely, it was  some combination of the three. And that in itself is also enormously telling.