This digest focuses on going beyond multiple choice testing to the development of methods for assessing complex knowledge and performances. Newly designed assessment systems must accurately measure and promote the complex thinking and learning goals that are known to be critical to students' academic success and their eventual sustained achievement and contribution to their communities. The digest discusses performance-based assessment and portfolio assessment as alternative approaches. The contribution that technology can make to the creation of workable and meaningful forms of alternative assessment is also addressed. The digest overviews some of the approaches to alternative assessment that the Center for Technology in Education (CTE) has been investigating. CTE is working in collaborative projects with a variety of schools. Within these projects, CTE has experimented with a number of tasks in the development of technology-based performance assessment records in high school science and mathematics, including computer simulations, oral presentations, paired explanations, progress interviews, and videotaped demonstrations. CTE evaluates student performance on two levels: the quality of the oral presentation and the quality of the device. A list of eight additional readings is provided. (TMK)