This brief provides lessons for assessing new college- and career-ready standards, including Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), based on California's experiences with the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS). Specifically, the brief identifies four areas in which districts can build on promising practices from California’s experience with CLAS while avoiding some of the pitfalls that undermined its effort:
(1) Implement immediate and sustained capacity-building strategies.
(2) Anticipate and respond to potential controversy surrounding assessment content and format.
(3) Understand technical and administrative challenges around assessment development, administration, and scoring.
(4) Build a constituency of support for new instructional and assessment efforts through a clear strategy of public engagement.
