There is a considerable amount of slippage in the language used to formulate the descriptions in different contexts. Each framework deals with a particular aspect and not necessarily another, they have in common the attempt to deal with progress in school language learning as a whole. Progress is conceptualised as 'increasingly complex tasks at progressive year levels of schooling. The USA Standards scheme describes content standards, leaving performance standards to state systems or districts. Progress in the national scheme is related to content at progressive year levels of schooling and exemplary tasks, which presumably are increasingly complex, but not performance.
Progress is conceptualised as student performance, ie.
The single task approach of the Toronto scheme has the advantage of providing a rich set of descriptors, but no single task can capture the multidimensionality of progress in language learning. Further, progress is not tied tightly to age and therefore to year levels of schooling as far as individual students are concerned. With the USA scheme, I have already made the point that content standards are not the same as performance standards, even though the conceptualisation of standards appears to be sufficiently rich. The tasks at different phases of schooling are not sufficiently differentiated. The Australian scheme attempts to tackle the issue of long-term in relation to performance, ie.