Dependence on standardized tests in adult literacy programs derives partly from their relative ease of adminstration and their appearance of providing valid and reliable quantitative data for program evaluation. Few adult educators are satisfied with the quality of the information, and most are extremely dissatisfied with the effects of such testing on teaching and learning. Literacy practitioners, researchers, and theorists have been working together and separately to seek alternatives and reinvent assessment. This movement is based on learner-centered or participatory approaches that are congruent with recent cross-cultural and ethnographic research. To understand and assess the literacy practices of different adult learners, alternative assessment explores the particular types of reading and writing that adults themselves see as meaningful under different circumstances and that reflect their own needs and aspirations. Most important, these new approaches communicate respect for adults. Procedures for assessing learner progress often include scripted or ethnographic interviews, conducted by students with students or by administrators or teachers/tutors with students. Some programs use profiles or inventories; others integrate assessment with instruction. Support is needed to build networks to share questions and findings about alternatives to traditional methods of assessment. (YLB)