The Common Core State Standards, released in June 2010, offer an opportunity to shift education away from shallow, test-prep instruction and toward a focus on key cognitive skills, writes Conley. Two consortia of states are now developing common assessments to measure these standards--assessments that will be designed to capture deeper, more complex learning than current state tests do. Conley describes the cognitive skills that students need for college and career success (problem formulation, research, interpretation, communication, and precision and accuracy) and asserts that the Common Core State Standards are written in a way that promotes these skills. Educators now need to follow up by keeping the skills in mind as they develop curriculum and instruction to teach to the standards. (Contains 3 endnotes.)