The NEA commissioned WestEd to examine current trends, promising techniques, and successful practices being used to assess student learning in the arts throughout the country, as well as identify potential areas in which arts assessment could be improved. Although the original intent of the study was to identify strong models of assessment practices that could serve as examples for possible replication, the study found that such models were not available and are in fact a need of the field. Thus, this report provides a description of the current state of arts assessment, including a review of the high-quality literature available, common practices being used to assess student learning, and needs of the field to improve arts assessment.