Overview
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also
referred to as the Nation's Report Card, is a continuing and nationally
representative assessment of student performance in several content areas
including, but not limited to reading, mathematics, science, writing, and U.S.
history.
NAEP is governed by the National Assessment Governing
Board (NAGB) and is administered by the National Center for Educational
Statistics (NCES) which is part of the U.S. Department of Education. Results
are confidential and results are not reported in terms of individual students.
Results are reported for the state or as part of the national results.
Results from NAEP are publicly available through NCES.
The NAEP Data Explorer (NDE) allows the public to analyze results at the
national (grades 4, 8, and 12) and state (grades 4 and 8) level with
disaggregated achievement estimates being provided based on gender,
race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, limited English proficiency and several
other factors. This level of reporting is made possible through sophisticated
student/school sampling techniques used by NCES to represent the nation as
all participating jurisdictions.
The administration of NAEP is made possible through a
collaborative effort between the federal government, the state, individual
school districts, and schools. Each state has a designated NAEP
coordinator who assists the federal government in the identification of
schools and who facilitates communication between the federal and state
governments, jurisdictions and schools. This coordinator also performs various
data analyses and prepares briefings for stakeholders including the State
Legislature, Board of Education and State Department of Education.