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An Overview of the National Assessment of Educational Progress

Since 1969, the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) has collected and reported information about the levels 
of educational achievement across the country.  The educational
attainments of 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds, as well as young
adults, have been surveyed.  Data have been collected in 10
learning areas:  art, career and occupational development,
citizenship, literature, mathematics, music, reading, science,
social studies and writing.  Different learning areas are
periodically reassessed in order to measure possible changes in
educational achievement over time.  Since 1969, the National
Assessment has interviewed and tested more than one million
young Americans.

Each learning assessment is the product of a consensus process,
involving several years of work by many educators, scholars, 
and lay persons from all over the nation.  These individuals
design objectives for the subject area, proposing general goals
they feel Americans should be achieving in their education.
After careful review, these objectives are given to groups of
exercise (item) writers, who develop measurement instruments
appropriate to each objective.

After the items have been extensively reviewed and field tested,
they are administered to probability samples.  Respondents who
make up these samples are selected in such a way that the results
of their assessment can be generalized to an entire population.
That is, on the basis of the performance of about 2,500 9-year-
olds on a given exercise, estimates are made of the performance
of all 9-year-olds in the country.  The performance of a number
of population subgroups is also estimated, for example, region of
the country, sex, type of community, and level of parental
education.  When assessment data have been collected,
scored, and analyzed, National Assessment publishes reports to
disseminate the results as widely as possible. Not all of the
items used in an assessment are released for publication. Because
NAEP will administer some of the same exercises in the future to
determine whether the performance levels of Americans have
increased, remained stable or decreased, it is essential that
these "change" exercises are kept secure.

The National Assessment is funded by the National Institute of
Education, USDE.  The grant for this work is currently awarded
to the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ.