A Question for CCSS Fans

There are teachers who like the CCSS. I try not to judge-- it's a long journey from hope to crankiness, and we all have to travel it in our own way in our own time. But when I encounter someone, whether in bloggosphere, facebookland, or meatworld, and I hear about how CCSS has really freed them up to do awesome new teachery things, I have just one question I want to ask:

What are you able to do now in a classroom that you could not do before CCSS?

See, this is one of the things I don't get. Were teachers seriously sitting in their rooms thinking, "Yes, I would like to dig deeper and work further into this reading material, but darn it, without some federal standards telling me to do it, I just can't"? Were there teachers who really wanted to push the envelope of education, but without some vaguely-worded bureaucratic edu-documents they just couldn't do it?

When someone tells me about the educational stuff I can now go ahead and do in my classroom, the close reading, the extensive writing, the deeper responses, the [fill in your favorite educational activity here], I can only respond, "What the heck do you think I've been doing for all these years?"

That is one of the truly insulting parts of CCSS-- some amateur shows up to tell me how to do something that i already do. "Hey, you could like, you know, have your students use evidence and facts and stuff when they are trying to prove a point?" Can I? Oh, can I? What a genius idea, because previously I just had them smear a few dead bugs on the paper and draw arrows to where the signs in the insect entrails supported their thesis statement! Thank you, oh thank you, for showing me how to do this!!

I'm lucky to be teaching high school English. If I were an elementary math teacher, CCSS would in fact be telling me to do things I never did before. And CCSS leaves out giant chunks of stuff that we all know are best practices. Generally, CCSS is about as freeing as a straightjacket. But if you are going to tell me that CCSS freed you up, liberated you, made it possible for you to be a better teacher than you ever were before, I have just one question:

What are you able to do now in a classroom that you could not do before CCSS?