As with the draft version that was discussed a while back, the Standards are still confusing “what students do” and “what they can talk about,” although this may be strategic. “Using simple tenses” is slated for 3rd grade, for example, but native-English-speaking students will have been using simple tenses since kindergarten at least. Knowledge about tenses would logically go in “knowledge of language,” but the Standards seem the reserve the latter term more for stylistics.
This kind of confusion could allow school systems to imply they’re “teaching about” tenses, while only having to demonstrate that yes, their students use the kind of English pre-schoolers are capable of. There’s no requirement that the students identify a verb form as present, merely that they use some simple present verbs (note that I’m not saying that the students should or should not be able to label verb tenses, only that as worded, the standards don’t really ask for what one might think they’re asking for). I suppose that could be a feature, not a bug. But it would be very hard to defend if someone questioned them about it directly.
--- Bill Spruiell