Assessment is usually considered as an afterthought in the instructional design process. Given the many challenges of assessment design--and the lack of ready solutions--teachers may fall back on familiar forms of assessments and hope for the best. As a result, the problem is not a lack of will on the part of teachers. Instead, it is the lack of design approaches and systematic ways for thinking that undercut more ambitious approaches to assessing students. In this column, the authors describe how the Inquiry Design Mode (IDM) offers a systematic approach to assessment, one that builds in complexity and nuance. IDM as an assessment system is built into the IDM blueprint in such fashion that it attends to the four qualities that Torrez and Claunch-Lebsack argue define "good" assessment practices. They conclude with a call for teachers to think beyond their individual classroom assessments and toward grade-level, department-level, and even school-level approaches to understanding what students know and can do.