A group of states that is designing tests for the common academic standards has taken a key step to ensure that the assessments reflect students' readiness for college-level work: It gave top higher education officials from member states voting power on test-design questions that are closest to the heart of the college-readiness question. At its quarterly meeting on April 3, the governing board of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) voted unanimously to give members of its advisory committee on college readiness voting power on four issues: (1) how to describe the expected performance levels on the tests; (2) who will set the cutoff scores for the tests; (3) what evidence will be used to decide the cutoff scores; and (4) what the cutoff scores will be. The move puts the highest-ranking officials from one college or university system in most of PARCC's 24 member states at the voting table, alongside its governing board--the K-12 schools chiefs from each member state--when it comes to the most pivotal questions about crafting tests that reflect college readiness. PARCC's decision illustrates the importance that states are placing on higher education's embrace of the common-standards tests as proxies for college readiness. Colleges and universities pledged support to the idea. But their willingness to actually use the final tests as proxies for readiness--to let students skip remedial work and go right into entry-level, credit-bearing courses--is considered pivotal to the success of the common-standards initiative, which rests on the idea that mastery of those expectations will prepare students for college study.