Assessing the Nation’s Report Card examines the history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and outlines plans for improving and modernizing the organization. Educational policy analyst Chester E. Finn, Jr. imparts a rare inside analysis of the evolution of the NAEP program at key moments in its history, and provides a firsthand perspective of crucial decisions and core goals that have helped shape it. The result is a revealing survey of the US’s most influential source of data on K–12 achievement. Assessing the Nation’s Report Card offers readers an in-depth understanding and appreciation of NAEP as well as an examination of its shortcomings, its controversies, and its current issues. The book explores why NAEP is considered the gold standard of educational assessments yet is much lesser known than other types of standardized testing. Finn underscores the promise of applying the results in addressing achievement gaps, boosting federal accountability, and driving education reform and policy. He also discloses how the data are collected and what the results can and cannot tell us. For more than 50 years, this ambitious federal testing program has informed the decisions of policy makers and educational leaders as they advocate for educational improvements in the US. Acknowledging the nation’s evolving need for actionable information about students and schools, Finn provides an assured and rare overview of the existing program and proposes possibilities for the future.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the nation's report card, has chronicled students' academic achievement in America for over a quarter of a century. It has been a valued source of information about students' performance, providing the best available trend data on the academic achievement of elementary, middle, and secondary school students in key subject areas. NAEP's prominence and the important need for stable and accurate measures of academic achievement call for evaluation of the program and an analysis of the extent to which its results are reasonable, valid, and informative to the public. This volume of papers considers the use and application of NAEP. It provides technical background to the recently published book, Grading the Nation's Report Card: Evaluating NAEP and Transforming the Assessment of Educational Progress (NRC, 1999), with papers on four key topics: NAEP's assessment development, content validity, design and use, and more broadly, the design of education indicator systems.

Since the late 1960s, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--the nation's report card--has been the only continuing measure of student achievement in key subject areas. Increasingly, educators and policymakers have expected NAEP to serve as a lever for education reform and many other purposes beyond its original role. Grading the Nation's Report Card examines ways NAEP can be strengthened to provide more informative portrayals of student achievement and the school and system factors that influence it. The committee offers specific recommendations and strategies for improving NAEP's effectiveness and utility, including: Linking achievement data to other education indicators. Streamlining data collection and other aspects of its design. Including students with disabilities and English-language learners. Revamping the process by which achievement levels are set. The book explores how to improve NAEP framework documents--which identify knowledge and skills to be assessed--with a clearer eye toward the inferences that will be drawn from the results. What should the nation expect from NAEP? What should NAEP do to meet these expectations? This book provides a blueprint for a new paradigm, important to education policymakers, professors, and students, as well as school administrators and teachers, and education advocates.

This report from The Nation's Report Card provides further information about students' lack of preparation in science, their apparent disinclination to enroll in challenging science courses, and the comparatively low achievement of Back and Hispanic students, females, economically disadvantaged students, and non-college bound students. These Science Report Card results are based on a national survey of nearly 20,000 students in grades 4, 8, and 12, conducted during the winter and spring of 1990 by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The results from the 1990 science assessment were analyzed using item response theory (IRT) methods, allowing NAEP to describe performance across the grades and subpopulations on a 0 to 500 scale. Along this continuum, four levels of proficiency were defined: Level 200: Understands Simple Scientific Principles; Level 250: Applies General Scientific Information; Level 300: Analyzes Scientific Procedures and Data; and Level 350: Integrates Specialized Scientific Information. Overall science proficiency by race/ethnicity, gender, region, type of community, type of school, parents' highest level of education, additional home factors, types of high school programs, and plans after high school was determined. Chapters include: (1) "Overall Science Proficiency for the Nation and Demographic Subpopulations"; (2) "Levels of Science Proficiency for the National and Demographic Subpopulations"; (3) "Science Proficiency by Content Areas for the Nation, Subpopulations, and in Relation to High School Course-Taking"; (4) "Attitudes toward Science Education and Students' Experiences in Science"; (5) "Toward Scientific Literacy for All: Instructional Goals and Practices"; and (6) "Who Is Teaching Science? A Profile of the Eighth-Grade Science Teaching Force." The profile survey on teachers included data on race/ethnicity, years of teaching experience, level and type of teaching certification, academic training, teachers' perceptions of their preparation to teach science topics, and teachers' professional activities in science. An overview of the procedures used in the 1990 science assessment, the NAEP scale anchoring process for the 1990 science assessment and additional example anchor items, and statistical data for all parts of the survey are appended. (KR)

This book describes results from the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (naep) assessment in U.S. history, conducted at grades 4, 8, and 12. Included in this report card are the results of students' achievement at each grade and within various subgroups of the general population. The report discusses the relationships between student performance and instructional and home background variables. This information gives educators a context for evaluating the U.S. history achievement of students and the results that may be used to guide reform efforts. Chapters include: (1) "naep 1994 U.S. History Assessment"; (2) "U.S. History Results for the Nation and Regions"; (3) "U.S. History Achievement Levels"; (4) "Contexts in which Students Learn History"; and (5) "What Students Know and Can Do in U.S. History." A conclusion, three appendices, 52 tables, and 13 figures complete the book. (Eh).