This policy brief is a guide for state education policy leaders to use in selecting and prioritizing college- and career-ready student performance indicators. These indicators can be built into the state's accountability system through public reporting, statewide performance goals, school-level incentives, and accountability formulas used to differentiate and classify schools and districts. Many of these indicators, along with critical non-academic indicators such as attendance, are also valuable for "early warning" systems to identify students in need of extra support. As each of these uses will drive actions in districts, schools and communities, the indicators must provide meaningful, actionable information to the right people at the right time to improve student outcomes. Teachers and administrators need these data in real time to take action--to change, adjust, or fine-tune systemic approaches to specific practices to support individual students, to identify emerging successes, and to benchmark best practices. Students and their parents need timely and clear data to understand where they are on the trajectory to college and career--not just in high school, but all along their academic path. Finally, policymakers and the public need access to these data to align resources, evaluate impacts from specific strategies, and inform a wide range of strategic decisions to improve outcomes and opportunities for all students. The brief focuses on academic performance indicators that illuminate student readiness for college and career across the P-20 spectrum, and makes the case for why each of these indicators matters to students. The actions required of educators, policymakers, parents, and community members are discussed in light of the academic indicators. The brief also illuminates critical decision points and trade-offs that states should consider for each indicator. The list of potential indicators is not meant to be exhaustive, as states may determine that others would be more strategic given their context. States should also not feel as though they need to use all of these indicators--in fact, states that carefully select a smaller set of indicators that will have the strongest impact could benefit by clearly focusing the right people, at the right time, on the indicators that matter most. The brief includes guiding questions designed to help states make decisions about which indicators will matter most, and identify ways they can be used to reinforce the state's policy priorities.