As more districts begin implementing the Common Core State Standards, text complexity is receiving a lot of discussion. It is important for educators to understand the numerous factors involved with text complexity and to have a wide range of strategies to support students with challenging text. This paper shares data from three elementary teachers that were impacted by the text complexity shift. Based on their understandings and interpretations of Common Core, teachers linked increasing the complexity of the text to using grade level text with all students, and changed their instruction significantly as a result. This shift in instruction led to an increase in whole class instruction with the same text, round robin reading, and less student engagement with reading.