A Pragmatic Future for NAEP Containing Costs and Updating Technologies (2022) / Chapter Skim
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2 NAEP Overview: Structure, Goals, and Costs
2 NAEP Overview: Structure, Goals, and Costs
Pages 11-26
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From page 11... ...
The assessment has two components, main NAEP and long-term trend NAEP. Main NAEP administers reading and mathematics assessments to students in the 4th and 8th grades every other year and less frequently to students in the 12th grade, as well as other subject assessments.
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From page 12... ...
It also reports data for student groups defined by gender, race and ethnicity, English-learner status, disability status, national school lunch program participation, school location, and region of the country.1 Long-term trend NAEP reports national-level results and compares results for regions. Estimating achievement results for these groups is not simply a matter of aggregating ordinary test scores.
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From page 13... ...
history 4, 8, 12 Civics 8 Writing 4, 8, 12 aIncludes national assessments and administrations of the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA)
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From page 14... ...
The state assessment samples each include roughly 150,000 students and 3,300 schools for each grade for each assessment; the national assessment samples each include roughly 10,000 students and 200 schools.5 Thus, in an average 4-year period, NAEP administers about 22 assessments to about 1.6 million students in about 35,000 schools, which means that, on average, there are 5.5 assessments annually for 400,000 students in 9,000 schools. Although the figures vary widely across years because of NAEP's biannual cycle for the mandated assessments in reading and mathematics, the annual averages are useful for placing average annual cost figures in context.
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From page 15... ...
The initial Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) program included six urban districts, and the number of districts increased to 10 in 2003 and 11 in 2005.*
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From page 16... ...
This careful approach has enabled NAEP to maintain trend lines for main NAEP that, in many cases, span 30 years. However, the program has broken trend lines when analysts have found that 6 NAGB's 2018 policy on framework development calls for each framework to be reviewed for potential update at least once every 10 years, though that review might determine in some cases that no update is required.
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From page 17... ...
Short student sessions also reduced the risk that students' fatigue would overly influence their performance. However, there are clearly drawbacks with the short testing times, not the least of which is the limitation of testing to a single subject, which both increases cost and limits any analysis of relationships across subjects.
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From page 18... ...
NAGB develops NAEP frameworks through a national consensus-building approach among constituencies that are reflected in the board's legally prescribed composition: teachers, principals, legislators, governors, chief state school officers, local education agencies, state and local board members, business representatives, testing experts, curriculum specialists, nonpublic school representatives, and parents. Building consensus for the assessment frameworks among these constituencies requires time and effort. Second, NAEP opens its development process to many public groups.
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From page 19... ...
As described above, program expansions include the mandate for state assessments in 2002, the extension to trial urban districts over several years, and the addition of 12th-grade assessments in 2009. Changes in administration include the decision to use NAEP-supported proctors for the mandated assessments in 2002 and the change from pencil-and-paper testing to digitally based administration in 2017 (though there were earlier isolated efforts with digitally based administration)
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From page 20... ...
NAGB has a smaller number of contracts, covering different support functions and the development of the assessment frameworks and achievement levels.12 Table 2-2 shows the panel's best estimate of current average annual costs for NAEP by function, including all funding sources. The cost differences that the panel was able to analyze were generally the ones that relate to NAEP's contract structure, since the costs inside individual contracts often 10 Information from NCES response to Q50.
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From page 21... ...
For the Alliance contracts, the estimates of the annual averages apply the percentage spending anticipated over fiscal 2020–2024, which is the period covered by the current Alliance contracts, to the NCES appropriation of $165 million for fiscal 2021.14 With this analysis, this report uses $175 million as an approximate annual cost for NAEP. Further details about some of these costs is provided in the relevant chapters.
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From page 22... ...
16 After a prepublication version of the report was provided to IES, NCES, and NAGB, this section was edited to note that some costs of the PISA program are paid directly by the individual participating countries. A comparison between NAEP and PISA costs was removed because the panel had inadequate information about the PISA costs paid directly by individual participating countries.
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From page 23... ...
samples Average per $438 Average overall program costs for one subject and 1 Student hour availability of cost data for both NAEP and other assessment programs makes it difficult to provide fair comparisons. However, the panel has used cost data that are publicly available to make some logical comparisons to the NAEP costs shown in Table 2-3.
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From page 24... ...
Across all 1.4 million tests administered, the mean budgeted cost per administered assessment is $23.21 The available cost averages omit various costs that are relevant for NAEP, such as the costs related to framework development and the staffing costs for both overseeing and administering the assessment.22 Nevertheless, they do allow a rough comparison showing that NAEP is substantially more expensive than state assessment programs. This analysis suggests that there may be room for greater cost effectiveness in NAEP, even while acknowledging that a comparison to a state assessment is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
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From page 25... ...
NAEP OVERVIEW: STRUCTURE, GOALS, AND COSTS 25 data for the test sponsors' costs to administer these exams, but one can assume that the students' fees for them exceed the costs that sponsors pay to deliver them. Though these various comparisons are imperfect, they suggest that the costs of the NAEP program are much higher than those of other assessment programs.
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