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  • NAEP Data in Focus: Examining the Research
24 Apr 2017
Report

Analyses Using Achievement Levels Based on Plausible Values

AIR - NAEP Working Paper #2017-02, NCES Data R Project Series #01

Qingshu Xie, MacroSys
Ting Zhang, AIR

Achievement levels are important yardsticks in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program. Three levels—Basic, Proficient, and Advanced—are defined for each subject and each grade, with cut scores for each level determined through a standard-setting process. The results using NAEP achievement levels are standard indicators of student performance reported in the Nation’s Report Card.

Methodologically, an analysis using NAEP achievement levels can be conducted with different approaches. In this document, we provide a detailed description of the plausible value method and demonstrate the method by replicating the analyses using SAS and comparing the replicated analysis results with those produced with NAEP Data Explorer. It is intended to provide a complete document for NAEP data users to easily adapt the methodologies with other statistical software packages such as SAS, Stata, R, and so on.

The results from the replication exercise with SAS fully match those from NDE—the official NCES online NAEP data analysis tool. This indicates that the methods discussed in this document can be used as a guide to conduct analyses using achievement levels with other statistical software packages, though there are limitations.

PDF icon Analyses Using Achievement Levels Based on Plausible Values (PDF)

Related Projects

Project

NCES Data R Project - EdSurvey

The released EdSurvey Version 2.6 is designed for the analysis of national and international education data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). EdSurvey gives users the ability to process and analyze these data efficiently, taking into account their complex sample survey design and the use of plausible values. EdSurvey is an R statistical package developed by AIR, tailored to the processing and analysis of NCES large-scale education data with appropriate procedures.

Related Work

1 Feb 2021
Spotlight

NAEP Data in Focus: Examining the Research

The NAEP Data in Focus working papers combine AIR’s expertise and experience not only with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), but with other large-scale assessments and survey-based longitudinal studies.
Topic: 
Education, NAEP

Further Reading

  • NCES Data R Project- EdSurvey
  • Weighted and Unweighted Correlation Methods for Large-Scale Educational Assessment: wCorr Formulas
  • NAEP Data in Focus: Examining the Research
  • Professional Development Seminar: Multilevel Modeling with International Datasets
  • Project Talent Data Available to Researchers
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Ting Zhang

Senior Researcher

Topic

Education
NAEP

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