The renewed attention to assessments that attempt to capture complex aspects of educational attainments of students is explored. The definition and impetus for attention of the measurement community to higher order thinking skills are examined. Through a detailed description, a model assessment development process is presented. The process relies on strong theory, but is firmly grounded in concerns for subject matter validity, feasibility, and credibility. An illustrative example of the development of sophisticated scoring approaches to be used to assess the quality of content in a student's writing leads to a discussion of educational indicators as a way of providing a context for results of new measures. A content scoring rubric is described, which incorporates use of prior knowledge, principles, facts and events, problems/premises, text information, interrelationships, and misconceptions. An example of the development of new curriculum indicators is included to demonstrate the complexity and utility of such efforts. Educational indicators, characteristics of indicator systems, and indicators as the context for higher order thinking are considered. An 88-item list of references is included. (SLD)