The focus article "Road Maps for Learning: A Guide to the Navigation of Learning Progressions" by Black, Wilson, and Yao (this issue) is a veritable tour-de-force, covering a great deal of education ground while spanning the heights from models of the interplay among curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment to interpretations of student responses to questions related to changes of state of matter. The article offers a compelling diagnosis of the difficulties evident in many classrooms and a strategy for alleviating them. The author proposes to employ the arguments contained in this article as a lens through which to view a current reform initiative of great moment, namely, the development of two multi-state assessment systems funded by the U.S. Department of Education under the Race to the Top program. If the development efforts are successful and if the systems are adopted by most of the member states in the two consortia, the impact on the nation's classrooms will likely be very great, as is the intention. The pressing question is whether this will be mainly for good or for ill. The two consortia, Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), are charged with developing assessments in mathematics and English language arts for grades 3 through 8 and for grade 11. Both assessment systems are supposed to fully reflect the Common Core State Standards for these subjects. The standards are the product of an intensive development process. They have generally been well received and have been adopted by nearly all states. The hope is that the combination of rigorous, developmentally grounded standards and aligned assessments embedded in a test-based accountability system will result, over time, in substantial improvements in academic achievement by driving change at every level of the education system. (Contains 5 footnotes.)