#7 Staircase of Text Complexity, is something my team has been dappling in, and we have looked at lists put out my Scholastic. What we have found is a lot of the books we have used to teach AZ standards don't always have the text complexity expected in our grade level. It is definitely a learning curve, and a new experience. This gives students a wider range of literature and higher expectations in the complexity of the text, differing in each grade level.
#1 Greater Focus is one that I worry about. It speaks of taking things deeper in the elementary grades to develop deeper understanding, but it doesn't say anything about high school. We are mapping out the CCSS for math and it does not completely seem like there will be time to go deeper.
Robert Rothman, the author of this article, is an "education writer" (no teaching experience) who works for an organization that promotes and benefits from the Common Core. This organization is called Alliance for Excellent Education (run by very wealthy business people and politicians). Watch the bias.
The author states that the CCS have less standards which provides the opportunity to go into greater depth. I didn't find this to be true. I found that there were holes that students needed filled in order to achieve success with the standards. I struggled to get all of the standards taught by mid April (testing time). Maybe as time goes on there will be less holes to fill and I will be able to go into greater depths.
Of course, not surprising, thanks for sharing @Bloom.