Abstract
U.S. high school reading and writing course materials most often revolve around a specific variation of English: Standard American English (SAE). In other words, although the U.S. is diverse and made up of people from a wide array of backgrounds, our education system fails to represent the complex web of English dialects that our cultural framework consists of. Our research explores SAE, the nation’s overarching Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and the front lines of our education system in Oregon. Ultimately, our findings reveal that the issue is not only a lack of dialectical diversity in language arts courses in U.S. high schools, but also a lack of any standard for such diversity and of anyone asking why this is the case. We argue that in order to meet the needs of their diverse student bodies, Oregon high schools need to incorporate variations of American English beyond SAE in their reading and writing curricula.