Grading the Nation's Report Card Evaluating NAEP and Transforming the Assessment of Educational Progress (1999) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction
Introduction
Pages 9-21
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From page 9... ...
Partly in response to this changed context, many major changes have been made in NAEP; it has become an exceedingly complex entity, reflecting the desires and needs of multiple constituencies. Perhaps the most critical feature of the changing context has been a deep and increasingly public concern about the quality of education in the United States.
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From page 10... ...
Citizens, educators, and policy makers at levels from local school districts to the federal bureaucracy want to know whether the substantial investments that have been made in education are reaping rewards. Accountability has become the goal of educational policy makers, the business community, and the public; this focus on accountability is closely tied to burgeoning awareness of the changing nature of commerce and the emergence of internationalism.
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From page 11... ...
We reiterate and synthesize the results of prior evaluators and researchers. We discuss earlier findings and recommendations as a conceptual foundation for what we hope is a unique and important contribution to the reconceptualization of NAEP's measures of student achievement and to a broadening of the definition of "the assessment of educational progress." We rely on earlier work and on our own research to provide a unifying vision for assessing educational progress and charting NAEP' s future.
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From page 12... ...
Test questions or items were then to be developed bearing a one-to-one correspondence to particular learning objectives. Thus, from NAEP's beginning, there were heavy demands for content validity as a part of the entire development process.
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The designers responded by defining testing objectives for NAEP that were too expansive to be incorporated into any single curriculum. They specified that results be reported for specific test items, not in relation to broad knowledge and skill domains.
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From page 14... ...
testing made it difficult to link NAEP results to state and local education policies and school practices. Furthermore, its reporting scheme allowed for measurement of change on individual items, but not on the broad subject areas; monitoring the educational experiences of students in varied racial and ethnic, language, and economic groups was difficult without summary scores.
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From page 15... ...
Current NAEP includes two distinct assessment programs with different instrumentation, sampling, administration, and reporting practices. The two assessments are referred to as trend NAEP and main NAEP.
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National NAEP also occasionally includes assessment studies that do not rely exclusively on large-scale assessments; these are referred to as special studies. Special studies are designed to gather information on important aspects of achievement not well addressed by large-scale assessment methods; for example, recent studies focused on oral reading fluency and extended writing performance.
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NCES procures test development and administration services from cooperating private companies; currently, these are the Educational Testing Service and WESTAT. The program is governed by the National Assessment Governing Board, appointed by the secretary of education but independent of the department.
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Writing Writing (4, 8) aAll national NAEP assessments are administered at grades 4, 8, and 12, unless otherwise indicated.
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The increased diversity of the student population and the national commitment to participation have led to pressures on the NAEP program to take steps to include all students in the assessment, including students with disabilities and English-language learners, and to provide modes of assessment that capture the knowledge and skills of all members of this increasingly diverse U.S. student population.
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From page 20... ...
Chapter 1 examines the information needs of NAEP's users and looks at the extent to which the program does and does not satisfy the many and varied needs for data and judgments about the progress of American education. In Chapter 1, we also propose a coordinated system of indicators for assessing educational progress and for providing context for improved understanding of NAEP's student achievement results.
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From page 21... ...
INTRODUCTION 21 committee considered during its evaluation, as well as specific conclusions and recommendations related to the chapter's broader topic. Chapter 6 provides suggestions for timelines, strategies, and priorities for implementing recommendations presented in Chapters 2 through 5.
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