am a 9th grade English teacher in Los Angeles Unified, and here's why I like Common Core:
1. The old standards that we've had to post for years blanketed my walls, ugly, unread, often irrelevant.
2. Speaking for my subject, CC focuses primarily on nonfiction, expository text. It tasks students to find and support a thesis with strong evidence. This is a critical skill in life, not simply school. And teachers aren't limited to nonfiction, nor is my curriculum deformed to meaningless test prep or rigid pacing plans. I can still do poetry, great novels and films, etc--it's only that we are teaching the kids to find the big ideas and prove their points with hard evidence.
3. If English teachers have been doing our jobs, we've been teaching this stuff already, at least in part.
4. It's topical. The current freshman prompt features a couple of op-ed pieces about Edward Snowden--good guy or bad guy?--and the kids have to choose a side, then support their choice.
5. It beats the hell out of our CA standardized tests, where they had to read about little girls entering dresses in county fairs, and learn words like 'rickrack,' and 'frisson of contempt.'
Common Core isn't going to solve everything, and the curve is too high to expect that much right away. Regardless, if we don't like change, we picked a funny profession. And neither I nor Common Core are going away anytime soon.