The United States is transforming how it assesses the academic attainment of its schoolchildren. These changes will come, in part, with the implementation of the new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia (SBAC) assessments in the spring of 2015, as well as other assessments developed by individual states to measure student performance on the Common Core State Standards or other college- and career-readiness benchmarks. The purpose of this booklet is to help school districts across the country, particularly those in our major cities, get ready for these assessments. The booklet will briefly summarize important features of both major common core assessments (PARCC and SBAC), outline major challenges that school districts will need to attend to when planning for these assessments, and present proposals and recommendations to school districts to help them in the planning process.