As individual states and communities work out curriculum and instructional expectations, high quality assessments of communication skills will continue to evolve. An active cycle of setting goals, developing instruction, teaching, testing, and assessing student and system success is the key to the process of renewal and improvement. All types of information needed to guide decisions build upon and must be grounded in successful student demonstrations of what students know and are able to do. Student communication behaviors must be approached from a number of perspectives using multiple indicators to make reasonable, informed judgments. In the United States, standards and expectations for student performance are currently being established at the state level. The actual responsibility for assessing student performance falls to the local education agency. Additional help is available from the national Speech Communication Association (SCA) which has published national standards in speaking, listening, and media literacy for four age ranges: K-3, 4-6, 7-8, and 9-12. The need to gain insight into the relative performance of individuals from time to time and group to group adds complexity to the assessment process. The primary source of technical complexity for the assessment of human communication is that measures of performance require some form of human judgment. The single general scale used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress or the multiple scales tied to specific tasks such as those used in Alberta, Canada, and Kansas serve as examples of qualitative assessments of student performance. Use of published instruments can save money and often have proven validity and reliability, but it is unlikely that published instruments will exactly fit locally developed standards for student performance. (Contains 20 references and 4 tables.) (RS)