NAEP

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Assessments are conducted periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history. It serves as a common metric for all states and selected urban districts and as a result, permits NAEP to provide a clear picture of student academic progress over time.

AIR’s work includes examining NAEP data in depth to provide insights into a wide range of topics, analyzing the achievement gaps in student performance by race/ethnicity, and maintaining a panel of experts that meets to commission and discuss research addressing validity considerations for NAEP.

Latest Work

30 Oct 2019
Report

NAEP Validity Studies Panel Responses to the Re-analysis of TUDA Mathematics Scores

When the 2017 NAEP Mathematics TUDA (Trial Urban District Assessment) results were reported and it appeared that student performance trends on the NAEP were not similar to student performance trends on the state assessments that were aligned to college and career ready standards, a reanalysis study was designed to explore whether content misalignment might be a possible reason for the mismatched results. This report serves as a response from the NAEP Validity Studies Panel to the analysis.
21 Aug 2019
Brief

Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales

By placing a state standard onto the NAEP scale, a NAEP equivalent score of that standard is produced, which can be compared across states. The recently released report—the seventh in the series—highlights the results from the 2016–17 school year and compares them with results from two earlier years: 2007 to show the longer-term trend and 2015 to show the immediate change.
Image of three girls excitedly looking at a book
22 May 2019
Q & A

The Condition of Education: Frequently Asked Questions, Answered

Every spring, the National Center for Education Statistics releases an omnibus report, The Condition of Education. In this Q&A, Jijun Zhang, a senior research analyst at AIR who has worked on this report for a decade, explains how it is compiled, who uses it, and what it can tell us about the state of education—both today and over time.
28 Oct 2018
Report

Developing New Indices to Measure Digital Technology Access and Familiarity

As NAEP transitions from a paper-based to a digitally based assessment, the question arises: Are all children are ready for the transition—and would any of them would be disadvantaged by it? To investigate these issues, AIR developed a new set of survey items related to digital technology for the 2015 administration of the NAEP math and reading assessment.
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12 Apr 2018
Report

Weighted and Unweighted Correlation Methods for Large-Scale Educational Assessment: wCorr Formulas

This report introduces the methodology used by the wCorr R package for computing the Pearson, Spearman, polyserial, polyserial, polychoric and tetrachoric correlations, with and without weights applied. Simulation evidence is presented to show correctness of the methods, including an examination of the bias and consistency.
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