College Board Standards for College Success

About the College Board Standards for College Success (CBSCS)

The College Board Standards for College Success (CBSCS) define the knowledge and skills students need to develop and master in English language arts, mathematics and statistics, and science in order to be college and career ready. The CBSCS outline a clear and coherent pathway to Advanced Placement® (AP®) and college readiness with the goal of increasing the number and diversity of students who are prepared not only to enroll in college, but to succeed in college and 21st-century careers. The College Board has published these standards freely to provide a national model of rigorous academic content standards that states, districts, schools and teachers may use to vertically align curriculum, instruction, assessment and professional development to AP and college readiness. These rigorous standards:

provide a model set of comprehensive standards for middle school and high school courses that lead to college and workplace readiness;
reflect 21st-century skills such as problem solving, critical and creative thinking, collaboration, and media and technological literacy;
articulate clear standards and objectives with supporting, in-depth performance expectations to guide instruction and curriculum development;
provide teachers, districts and states with tools for increasing the rigor and alignment of courses across grades 6-12 to college and workplace readiness; and
assist teachers in designing lessons and classroom assessments.

Standards Development Process

To guide the standards development process, the College Board convened national committees of middle school and high school teachers, college faculty, subject matter experts, assessment specialists, teacher education faculty and curriculum experts who had experience in developing content standards for states and national professional organizations.

The standards advisory committees relied on college-readiness evidence gathered from a wide array of sources to design and develop the CBSCS. These sources include national and international frameworks such as National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS); results of surveys and course content analyses from college faculty regarding what is most important for college readiness; assessment frameworks from relevant AP exams, the SAT®, the PSAT/NMSQT®, and College Level Examination Program® (CLEP®) exams, and selected university placement programs.

Beginning with the end goal in mind, the committees first defined the academic demands students will face in AP or first-year college courses in English, mathematics and statistics, and science. After identifying these demands, the committees then backmapped to the start of middle school to outline a vertical progression, or road map, of critical thinking skills and knowledge students need to be prepared for college-level work.

Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services

States and districts are encouraged to use the CBSCS as a guiding framework to strengthen the alignment of their standards, curriculum and assessments to college readiness. The College Board offers standards and curriculum alignment services to states and districts, providing independent reviews of standards, curriculum and assessments. College Board content specialists use established alignment methods and review criteria to analyze the alignment and offer meaningful findings and recommendations tailored to a state‘s or district's needs.

The College Board also uses the CBSCS to align our own curriculum and assessment programs, including SpringBoard®, to college readiness.

Learn More

Please contact Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services at Standards_Requests@collegeboard.org or your regional College Board representative for more information on the CBSCS and our alignment services.