Question
Our state education people told us that we aren't doing No Child Left Behind anymore, we are doing the Common Core Standards. Thus, they say, we no longer have to focus on phonological awareness, phonics, or fluency as we did for the past decade.
Answer:
The Common Core actually requires the teaching of all of those skills that you mention. In the standards document, they are labeled as "Reading
Standards: Foundational Skills (K-5)." Perhaps the person you spoke with was confused by how different these new standards look. In the Common Core, there are several pages devoted to describing the reading or reading comprehension standards and the foundation standards are tucked in after them. These particular standards might not be as prominent in the documents, but they still need to be taught well and successfully.