The Assessment Skills and Knowledge (ASK) standards seek to articulate the areas of content knowledge, skill and dispositions that student affairs professionals need in order to perform as practitioner-scholars to assess the degree to which students are mastering the learning and development outcomes the professionals intend. Consistent with language used in the context of educational accountability, these areas of knowledge and skill are termed "content standards". Phrased conversationally, content standards describe "what you need to know." The primary focus of this discussion paper is to identify the appropriate knowledge content areas all student affairs practitioners need in order to engage in meaningful and useful assessment. The identification of appropriate proficiency levels for each content area is outside the scope of this project. However, it follows that once content areas are established and generally agreed upon, a discussion of proficiency in each area will and should follow. Developed in consultation with student affairs professionals from across the Association, the ASK content areas are: (1) Assessment Design; (2) Articulating Learning and Development Outcomes; (3) Selection of Data Collection and Management Methods; (4) Assessment Instruments; (5) Surveys Used for Assessment Purposes; (6) Interviews and Focus Groups used for Assessment Purposes; (7) Assessment Methods: Analysis; (8) Benchmarking; (9) Program Review and Evaluation; (10) Assessment Ethics; (11) Effective Reporting and Use of Results; (12) Politics of Assessment; and (13) Assessment Education.