Black, Wilson, and Yao (this issue) make a compelling case for a coherent model of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment, all built around a well-specified theory of learning. Arguing that dominant assessment policies and practices tend to drive pedagogy and student attitudes toward learning in pernicious ways, Black et al. make an argument that is as much about policy, values, and use as it is about assessment design. They propose an assessment system that is first and foremost about helping teachers understand how well students are learning with respect to a clear set of desired learning outcomes so that teachers can take appropriate steps to help students progress. They also note that for teachers to use learning progressions and assessments well, substantial professional development will likely be needed. In contrasting the endorsed model with existing practices, Black et al. warn that a focus on scores and competition leads students to ego-involvement rather than task-involvement attitudes, with potentially adverse impact on test scores and approaches to learning. Under the proposed model, the goal is for teachers and students to engage in assessments and discourse and reasoning around those assessments that will focus attention on progress toward a very clear set of ambitious learning objectives. In this article, the author contends that by including judgment processes that include comparisons of similar classrooms, one can further account for student differences in attempting to define differences in the quality of teaching that students experience. Making such judgments in an informed, transparent, and credible manner will require substantial institutional development. Educational systems will need to develop processes in which judgment can be exercised in ways that promote professional, credible, and transparent processes by teachers and administrators. Doing so can result in analogous analytic structures for teachers and students, in which the focus of attention is on the task at hand, not simply on the rankings of individuals on scales that are opaque and poorly understood.