As the National Assessment Governing Board marks its 20th anniversary, it looks back at its stewardship of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) with understandable pride. NAEP existed for 20 years before the Board was established to provide an independent governance structure for the assessment. During its first two decades, NAEP…

Using the generalized partial-credit item response theory (IRT) model, polytomous items from the 1991 field test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test were calibrated with multiple-choice and open-ended items. Polytomous items provide more information than dichotomous items. (SLD)

Test items are designed to be representative of the subject areas that they measure and to reflect the importance of specific domains or item types within those subject areas. Content validity is achieved by content specification and number of items in each content domain included in the design of the test. However, largely due to the normal…

NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) has developed its first set of assessment tasks for measuring student achievement in theatre. These tasks draw on a wide range of dramatic forms and use both paper-and-pencil and performance tasks. Sections in this serial issue include: "The Importance of Theatre"; "The Theatre…

This demonstration booklet illustrates the kinds of exercises or test questions and tasks used in the assessment of student achievement in reading and in writing by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Each student will be asked to complete the background section and the cognitive sections in one subject, and the assessment will…

This demonstration booklet illustrates the kinds of exercises or test questions and tasks used in the assessment of student achievement in reading and writing by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Each student will be asked to complete the background section and the cognitive sections for one subject, and the assessment will…

In large-scale assessments, some amount of background material is generally collected. Background questionnaires in the National Assessment of Educational Progress are the subject of this report. Most of the questions in NAEP background questionnaires have asked about course taking patterns and course content, but it is argued that the material…

This demonstration booklet illustrates the kinds of exercises or test questions and tasks used in the assessment of student achievement in reading and writing by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Each student will be asked to complete the background section and the cognitive sections for one subject, and the assessment will…

This paper discusses the rationale for enhancing the current National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) design by adding a capacity for adaptive testing. Items are tailored to the achievement level of the student in adaptive testing. The report describes a 1993 Ohio field trail of two-stage assessment carried out by the National Opinion…

In recent assessments, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has permitted schools to exclude some students with disabilities or limited English proficiency because it believed that its assessments would not accurately measure the ability and achievement levels of these students. The exclusion of a portion of students from…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has always included students with disabilities and limited English proficient (LEP) students in the sample to be assessed, but only in relatively limited numbers. Recent research has indicated that many students who have been excluded are in fact capable of participating. The National Center…

This report examines the potential of adaptive testing, two-stage testing in particular, for improving the data quality of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Following a discussion of the rationale for adaptive testing in assessment and a review of previous studies of two-stage testing, this report describes a 1993 Ohio field…

In contrast to multiple-choice test questions, figural response items call for constructed responses and rely upon figural material, such as illustrations and graphs, as the response medium. Figural response questions in various science domains were created and administered to a sample of 347 fourth, 365 eighth, and 322 twelfth graders. Data were…

This paper describes the task analysis of performance-based science tasks that were designed for the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment, now postponed until 1996, and field tested in 1993. A brief description of the science performance tasks is followed by a description of the task analyses performed and a…

The framework and specifications for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment were developed in 1991-92 and field tested in 1993. The assessment was postponed, however, and will be administered in 1996. The framework calls for performance-based tasks that probe students' abilities to use materials to make…