Policy linking is a method used to link different student assessments to a common scale. It allows countries to use their existing assessments – sub-national, national, and crossnational – for reporting on global student learning outcome indicators, namely Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 4.1.1 (a, b, and c) and the USAID Foreign Assistance (“F”) Indicators. These indicators require data on the percentage of students achieving global minimum proficiency in each country. Through policy linking, countries set assessment-specific global benchmarks based on minimum proficiency descriptors associated with a common scale. USAID has worked closely with global partners including with the World Bank, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and the Australian Council for Education Research to support the development of the Policy Linking Toolkit (PLT) and materials.