Large-scale academic assessments have played a dominant role in U.S. federal and state education policies over the past couple of decades. Among the many validity issues that presently concern test users is the evaluation of alignment among large-scale assessments and the academic content and performance standards on which they are based. This report describes the current peer review expectations for alignment evidence, presents alignment as a problem of coherence to be addressed within policy and measurement contexts, describes popular approaches to evaluating alignment, and offers new perspectives that may yield more and more useful alignment information for test users and others. [This white paper was commissioned by the Technical Issues in Large Scale Assessment State Collaborative on Assessments and Student Standards of the Council of Chief State School Officers.]