Provides educators with information that will ensure that state standards lead to higher student achievement. Describes how to sequence content and set up grading scales that help facilitate formative assessment and effective instruction. Provides steps for converting standards into guidelines that are more useful to classroom teachers.

Standards in education -- Unpacking standards and designing measurement topics -- A scale format for measurement topics -- A formative assessment system using measurement topics -- Grades and report cards using measurement topics -- Scoring scales for language arts -- Scoring scales for mathematics -- Scoring scales for science -- Scoring scales for social studies -- Scoring scales for life skills.