This report is a product of Education Sector's Next Generation of Accountability initiative. The initiative seeks to strengthen public education by examining key elements of accountability, for instance, who should be responsible for student success and how they should be held responsible. The author of this report argues that technology has the potential to drastically improve our current assessment systems and practices, leading to significant improvements in teaching and learning in the nation's classrooms. The report evaluates several new research projects that demonstrate how information technology can both deepen and broaden assessment practices in elementary and secondary education by testing new skills and concepts and doing so more comprehensively. And, importantly, these research projects have produced assessments that reflect what cognitive research tells us about how people learn, providing an opportunity to greatly strengthen the quality of instruction in the nation's classrooms. (Contains 4 figures, 1 table, and 65 endnotes.)