In summer and fall of 1999, at the request of the State Department of Education, Achieve evaluated the quality, rigor and alignment of Oregon's standards and assessments in English and math. Oregon's assessment system included multiple-choice, short-answer and essay tests in 3rd, 5th and 10th grades, as well as a system for assessing some standards at the local level with common assessments.

Achieve's benchmarking evaluation found Oregon's standards to be measurable, clear and largely jargon-free. However, they tended to repeat content across several grades and did not, therefore, provide sufficient guidance for classroom instruction. The math standards were not as rigorous as exemplary standards and sometimes underestimated students' potential at particular grade levels. Achieve's review of Oregon's assessments in English and math found that they made a good faith effort to measure important content and skills laid out in the standards, measuring the content and performances described. However, the assessments measured some of the objectives specified in the standards better than others, thus covering the standards unevenly. Also, the assessments were not always rigorous enough for the given grade levels, particularly in high school.

Achieve recommended that the standards be revised to increase the level of specificity and provide more effective guidance for the state's classrooms. We also urged that the tests should be strengthened by increasing the level of rigor in the assessments and by ensuring that the tests grow progressively more demanding across grades.