This paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on institutional support for student assessment, offering an organizing framework for using this information to shape institutional policies, processes, and practices in ways that lead to both improved student performance and institutional functioning. The framework, first, involves the overall institutional approach to the content and methods of student assessment. Next, it examines external influences on student assessment, including national efforts, state-level initiatives, regional and professional accreditation associations, private sector influence and support, and professional associations. Discussion of the framework's next component, organizational and administrative support, considers student assessment support strategy, leadership and governance patterns for student assessment, academic management policies and practices, institutional culture and climate, evaluation and revision of student assessment approaches, and the influence of institutional context dimensions. The final component of the model is institutional utilization and the impact of student assessment on academic decision making, on the institution, and on the relationship between an institution and its external environment. (Contains 170 references.) (DB)