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"New tests being designed for students in nearly half the states in the country will take eight to 10 hours, depending on grade level, and schools will have a testing window of up to 20 days to administer them, according to guidance released today. The new information comes from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, one of the two big groups of states that are building tests in mathematics and English/language arts for the common standards. It answers one of the big, dangling questions that's attended the process of making these new tests: Given their promises to measure students' skills in a deeper, more nuanced way, partly through the use of extended performance tasks, just how long will these tests take?"

"Assessment Administration Guidance"

"How to Get Students There ... The new online assessments will challenge educators to ensure that students not only have learned certain things, but also can demonstrate their knowledge using technology and apply their learning to a variety of tasks-all without the direction of the teacher."

"You are a congresswoman's chief-of-staff and she needs your help coming up with a position on whether a nuclear power plant should be built in the district. These are the kinds of prompts students across the country are being presented with during the first round of Common Core testing this spring."

"Millions of teachers and thousands of districts in 45 states are currently undergoing a sea change in the way that they teach and assess students. The new Common Core Standards for learning have been phased into states and districts since 2010, and the digitized Common Core Assessments are scheduled to deploy in states that have adopted them as early as the 2014-2015 school year. "

"As full implementation of Common Core State Standards nears, educators are searching for answers to three questions: 1) What are the CC State Standards? 2) How will they change what I do? and 3) Why are they here? Some of the details are frustratingly elusive as various groups -- publishers, school districts, states, and universities -- jockey for positions in the first post-NCLB initiative. Here's what we know that can fit into a blog:"

"For years, there has been a gulf between the sunny results on state tests that show the majority of students are doing just fine and the much lower performance on the tough national exam, the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP). As the scores on new, tougher Common Core tests are revealed this year advocates are hopeful that gap will shrink."

"As you may know, the ACT has been undergoing some slight changes lately. The goal of these changes is to make the ACT more rigorous so it can better reflect "college and career readiness." College and career readiness is also a major goal of the Common Core. Since both the Common Core and the ACT have the same goal, it's not surprising some of the recent ACT changes seem to bring the test more in line with Common Core standards."

View or Print the ACT Standards for: English, Mathematics, Reading Science , and Writing