This handbook is designed to provide Ohio's vocational teachers with guidelines and materials for assessing student performance in the areas of academic, occupational, and employability skills. Chapter 1 examines assessment in the context of the educational reform agenda and efforts to link assessment and instruction and reviews the purposes of assessment. Reasons why assessing student learning is important to learners, teachers, administrators, and employers are detailed in chapter 2, and sources of information about the types of academic, occupational, and employability skills that vocational and career educators should assess are discussed in chapter 3. Chapters 4-8, which detail the steps in planning, conducting, and tracking assessments, include information on the following: planning assessments (curriculum frameworks, alignment with instructional goals, examining processes and products of learning, focusing on performance objectives, making assessment authentic, and developing self-assessment skills); assessing cognitive learning (developing and administering written tests and using alternatives to written tests); assessing affective learning; assessing psychomotor learning (specifying and developing performance tests for regular and special needs students); and tracking and reporting results (learner profiles, career passports, and external certification. Contains 32 references. (MN)