The purpose of this National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Achievement Levels Validity Argument Report is to synthesize evidence currently available to address the validity of the interpretations and uses of the NAEP Achievement Levels. Validity is the extent to which theory and evidence supports or refutes proposed and enacted test…

Linking score scales across different tests is considered speculative and fraught, even at the aggregate level. We introduce and illustrate validation methods for aggregate linkages, using the challenge of linking U.S. school district average test scores across states as a motivating example. We show that aggregate linkages can be validated both…

This paper provides the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) community with information that may help maintain the validity and utility of the NAEP assessments for civics and U.S. history as revisions are planned to the NAEP…

Educational quality is a way to influence the future of the American economy (Hanushek, 1986). Large-scale assessments are designed to determine quality in education by measuring student achievement. A connection exists between the standards, teachers, and assessments that form a system of accountability within education. State and national…

During the past decade, the NAEP Validity Studies (NVS) Panel has been monitoring, studying, and commenting on potential issues with the validity of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) arising from changes that have been brought about by the adoption of rigorous state college and career readiness standards, such as the Common…

This paper describes a statistical linking between the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Grade 4 reading and the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) in Grade 4 reading. The primary purpose of the linking study is to obtain a statistical comparison between NAEP (a national assessment) and PIRLS (an…

In early 2001, to support an internal evaluation of the impact of changing exclusion rates on reports of statistically significant gains across states, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) sponsored research on imputation procedures of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for the excluded students and provided…

This paper describes one of the first efforts by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to improve measurement at the lower end of the distribution, including measurement for students with disabilities (SD) and English language learners (ELLs). One way to improve measurement at the lower end is to introduce one or more…

Introduction: For decades, prior to the inception of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was the only vehicle through which states could assess the progress of their students using a common metric. Now, 45 states, 4 U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia have adopted the CCSS to…

"Learning progressions" are one of the most important assessment design ideas to be introduced in the past decade. In the United States, several committees of the National Research Council (NRC) have argued for the use of learning progressions as a means to foster both deeper mastery of subject-matter content and higher level reasoning…

Since its first assessment in 1969, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has made a unique contribution to our understanding of American education. It is the only national source of information on the educational achievement of U.S. students, and it is the only vehicle by which states can compare the progress of their students…

Development of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and the creation of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (Smarter Balanced) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), changes the pattern of accountability testing. These changes raise the question: "How should NAEP's validity and utility be…

Since 1973, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has gathered information about student achievement in mathematics. Results of these periodic assessments, produced in print and web-based formats, provide valuable information to a wide variety of audiences. They inform citizens about the nature of students' comprehension of the…