Dear Colleagues,

The California State Board of Education adopted the Common Core State Standards（CCSS）, new standards that define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in university-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs that integrate college and career. In 2011, California joined the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium（Smarter Balanced）, one of two multistate consortia awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Education to develop an assessment system aligned to the Common Core State Standards（CCSS） by the 2014-15 school year. Smarter Balanced's goal is to work with member states to develop next-generation assessments that accurately measure student progress toward college- and career-readiness.

Through its member states, and in consultation with the lead standards' writers and other national education experts, Smarter Balanced is translating the CCSS into assessment targets, test blueprints, and, ultimately, assessment items and performance tasks. The Consortium also will establish performance benchmarks that define the level of content and skill mastery that marks students as college- and career-ready. These performance benchmarks will be determined through a deliberative and evidence-based standard-setting process, which will include input from K-12 educators and college and university faculty.

To develop the new assessments, Smarter Balanced is working with K-12 teachers and administrators and higher education faculty from two- and four-year colleges and universities representing governing member states to draft initial "Achievement Level Descriptors"（ALDs）for grade levels 3-8 and 11. The ALDs describe performance on standardized tests in terms of levels or categories of performance and, for the grade 11 assessment, are linked to an operational definition of college readiness, as well as a policy framework to guide score interpretation for high schools and colleges. The Smarter Balanced system of ALDs is based upon four levels of achievement that describe whether students have demonstrated “deep command,” “sufficient command,” “partial command,” or “minimal command” of knowledge, skills, and processes across the two assessed content areas of English language arts/literacy and mathematics.

The most commonly understood use of ALDs is to communicate the meaning of test scores to teachers, parents, and students. Smarter Balanced is developing a system of ALDs that serve different purposes for item writing, standard-setting, and reporting results. Governing States are expected to adopt the initial ALDs in March 2013. ALDs may be revised as needed based on results from the Field Test of the assessment system in early 2014.

The draft initial ALDs and college readiness policy framework are part of a critical effort to ensure that the grade 11 summative assessment can be used as evidence that students are ready for entry-level, transferable, credit-bearing courses in English and mathematics and should be exempted from remedial coursework. The draft definition of college readiness is focused on the core areas of ELA/literacy and mathematics described by the Common Core State Standards. In California, when the new K-12 assessments are implemented in 2104-15, we will transition the Early Assessment Program to this new 11th grade college readiness assessment. As such, your review and input on the ALDs is important and will help ensure that the new assessments will reflect our system's interests so that results may be used for placement into college-level（transfer level）courses in the California Community Colleges.

ACTION：Smarter Balanced recently released the draft Achievement Level Descriptors for public review and comment and welcomes feedback on the content, coherence, clarity, and rigor of the ALDs from member states, partners, and individual stakeholders through January 15, 2013. The ALD documents and feedback survey are now available on the Smarter Balanced public web site athttp://www.smarterbalanced.org/achievement-level-descriptors-and-college-readiness/. For background on the Common Core State Standards, go to：http://www.corestandards.org/. For additional information about Smarter Balanced and higher education's role, go to：http://www.smarterbalanced.org/higher-education/ You may also be interested to read the story EdWeek ran today on the release（seehttp://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2012/11/testing_consortium_crafts_coll.html）.