The scoring scheme of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is studied, as well as techniques for estimating its reliability. NAEP data are collected on students of age 13 in the fall, age 9 in the winter, and age 17 in the spring. The scoring task, involving hand scoring of open-ended items, may vary between 25,000 responses to…

Political and legislative pressures have posed a number of measurement issues and challenges to the development of sound, valid voluntary national tests (VNTs). This paper focuses on what appear to be the most difficult technical issues related to the VNT proposed by President Clinton in 1997. Technical issues refer to psychometric issues, as…

An approach was developed based on item-response models defined at the level of salient subject groups rather than at the level of individuals, designed for use with multiple-matrix sampling designs. In each of three National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics subtopics, Reiser's group-effects latent trait model was fitted to…

This symposium deals with recent issues in the development of the National Assessment model. General goals are outlined and the following topics are discussed: "Objectives and Exercises" (Jack C. Merwin); "Sampling" (A. Finkner); and "Data Analysis" (John Milholland). (CK) Aspect of National Assessment (NAEP) dealt…