This research project was designed to help the faculty at a southwestern, urban elementary school better understand what parents thought about the school's alternative assessment methods and narrative reporting to communicate with parents. Assessment methods were defined as the ways teachers learn about students' understandings, and communication methods were defined as narrative reports by teachers; parents did not make this distinction. With few exceptions, when parents used the term assessment, they were referring to the narrative reports they received. Subjects were 192 parents who responded to a questionnaire on their perceptions of assessment methods and the narrative reports. Results indicated that parents were generally pleased with the detail of the narrative reports. They believed they were receiving more information about their children than they ever had with any other reporting system, but were unsure about the specific methods being used to assess their children's progress, and could not always determine from the narrative reports how well their children were performing. Some parents wanted more information about children's ranks, grade levels in class, and a specific test performance on national college admissions tests. As a result of the study and based on their teaching experiences, the faculty at the subject school scheduled more frequent parent conferences, drafted grade-level standards, and developed "exemplar booklets," which provide student work samples demonstrating varying levels of achievement for each standard. (WP)