Within each state there is a patchwork of residential educational programs that are affiliated with youth shelters, detention centers, hospitals, mental health facilities, and other settings. In Iowa, the local school district, an area education agency (AEA), the Department of Human Services, and others provide educational services. Heartland AEA's Shelter Care Educational Program (SCEP) provides the educational program in six central Iowa youth shelters and Iowa's largest juvenile detention center. SCEP, mandated by Iowa law, is funded by appropriations from local school districts and monitored by the Iowa Department of Education. SCEP's mission is to provide an effective learning environment to meet the individual educational needs of youth in shelter and detention through a comprehensive model of educational assessment and instruction in core content areas and essential skills. In this article, the authors propose a model for effective assessment in residential academic programs. This effective assessment model developed for a residential educational program has a solid foundation in research-based assessment methods. The model proposed for effective assessment and the rationale for developing the tools to measure reading, mathematics, and writing, while still under revision and evaluation, have yielded some positive results in teacher perspective and preliminary student outcomes.