Authentic assessment is widely recognized as a necessary component of high quality early childhood practices practices (Bagnato, Neisworth, & Pretti-Frontczak, 2010; Grisham-Brown, Hallam & Brookshire, 2006). As part of its Race to the Top: Early Learning Challenge Great Workforce Plan, Minnesota set a goal of developing an effective professional development infrastructure to promote the use of authentic assessment by early educators. The purposes of this study were to: 1) identify the gaps in knowledge and skills experienced by early educators across the early care and education field; 2) identify gaps in knowledge and skills of professional development (PD) providers who train on authentic assessment; 3) use the findings to develop authentic assessment-specific training modules that meet the needs of various types of early educators at different levels of knowledge and practice; and 4) at a larger level, use the findings to guide the development of a sustainable, cross-sector state infrastructure for assessment training and competence. A comprehensive cross-sector of early educators and PD providers were surveyed to determine their knowledge, perceptions, and practices related to authentic assessment. Both surveys were based on the Landscape Survey, originally developed by Buysse, Hollingsworth, and West (2008) and on the current literature on the use of authentic assessment. Surveys were distributed via e-mail through a multitude of early childhood listservs; 702 early educators and 68 professional development providers responded to the survey and provided complete demographic information. Interviews were also conducted with 18 early educators and 11 professional development providers to ascertain more in-depth information than was provided by the survey data. (author abstract)