The Core to College Initiative, a three-year, multi-state initiative funded by the Lumina Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is designed to promote collaboration between the K–12 and higher education systems in the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and aligned assessments.

A central goal of the Core to College Initiative is to assist states in making deliberate use of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) assessments to help determine students’ placement into credit-bearing, college-level, and career-related courses.

Based on findings from WestEd’s interviews and analysis, this report examines the Core to College states’ current course placement policies and practices—which range from standard, centralized policies to allowing higher education institutions complete autonomy in setting course placement policies. It also explores the current implementation planning efforts for the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments, along with how these consortia assessments may be integrated into states’ existing course placement policies.

Other reports in the Core to College series