Subject-matter experts reviewed the content, rigor, and clarity of the first public drafts of the "Common Core" standards released in September 2009 by the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) of the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. Using the same criteria, the same experts also reviewed the reading/writing and mathematics frameworks of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS); and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Letter grades were awarded to each. The goal is to help U.S. educators and policymakers to judge the respective merits of these influential standards, de facto standards, and possible future standards. In particular, how do the draft Common Core standards stack up alongside extant national and international benchmarks? Here are the grades: (1) Common Core Reading/Writing/Speaking/Listening: B; (2) Common Core Mathematics: B; (3) NAEP Reading: B And NAEP Writing: B; (4) NAEP Mathematics: C; (5) TIMSS Mathematics: A; (6) PISA Mathematics: D; and (7) PISA Reading: D. This report is organized as follows. Part 1: Introduction (Chester E. Finn Jr. and Amber M. Winkler) first describes the assumptions that underpin this work, then the study methods. Part 2: Grading (W. Stephen Wilson, Richard Askey, Sheila Byrd Carmichael, and Carol Jago) describes how the standards were graded, including the content-specific criteria that the expert reviewers used to assess them and the grading metric employed to score them. Part 3: Reviews (W. Stephen Wilson and Sheila Byrd Carmichael) includes the standards reviews with math first (Common Core, NAEP, TIMSS, PISA) followed by English language arts (Common Core, NAEP, PISA). Part 4 closes with a takeaway, authored by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Amber M. Winkler. Finally, the appendix (part 5, authored by Stafford Palmieri) includes an overview of the standards that have been reviewed. These interim findings will be supplemented in Spring 2010. (Contains 2 exhibits and 37 footnotes.