We live in a time when society is transforming and simple jobs seem to cease to exist. Due to technological advances many jobs that could previously be regarded as unqualified today require education and theoretical knowledge. In fact, knowledge seems to be the key for access to a future labor market. Knowledge brings wealth to countries, companies and individuals. Society is transforming into what has come to be referred to as the knowledge society. In order to adjust to these changes the Swedish school system has gone from a norm-referenced to a criterion-referenced grading system. As an effect of this students’ lack of knowledge becomes evident. If a student does not fulfill the criteria, s/he will not pass the course. Despite this intention students still come to high school with insufficient skills, including basic skills of reading and writing. The purpose of this thesis is to study measures taken by high school teachers to induce students to reach the goals they should have reached in elementary school. To make this feasible I have carried out an empirical study of a reading project in two classes at a high school in Borås. Two teachers were interviewed about their work with this project. This project was shown to be connected to a larger municipal project called Betyg och bedömning, whose major aim is to confirm equivalence between schools in the municipality. A central part of this project’s work concerns an assessment measuring student knowledge, that is carried out in the beginning of each fall term. This assessment indicates which students that do not have the sufficient previous knowledge and thereby will have difficulties completing their high school program. The reading project I have studied is designed to help these students reach an acceptable level of reading ability. During this reading project teachers and students had the possibility to focus their attention not only on texts, but also on basic aspects of reading. The students were taught some literary terms, which they then used to analyze and discuss the different texts. To follow up the students’ progress a second assessment was used. The result showed that most students now had reached the goals that they actually should have reached in elementary school. A central aspect of these different projects is the importance of making goals and requirements visible to students. To be successful in pursuing your goals, you must first realize which those goals are. Keywords: assessment, criterion-referenced grading system, reading project.