The Nation's Report Card

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as "the Nation's Report Card," is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subjects. Its two major goals are to measure student achievement and to report change in performance over time. NAEP provides results for the nation as a whole in a variety of subjects and for the states individually in mathematics, reading, science, and writing. Performance is reported by groups of students, for example, by gender, by different racial and ethnic groups, and by participation in special programs. Note: NAEP does not provide results for individual students or for their schools.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what U.S. students know and can do. Since 1969, NAEP has measured academic progress in subjects such as reading, math, science, writing, U.S. history, the arts, and economics. Under federal law, states and local educational agencies that receive Title I-A funds must participate in the biennial NAEP assessments of math and reading at grades 4 and 8.

From January 27 – March 7, 2014, NAEP plans to assess 4th, 8th, and 12th grade students selected by the National Center for Education Statistics to represent students throughout the state and the nation. In 2014, NAEP will assess civics, geography, and U.S. history, as well as technology and engineering literacy at grade 8. In addition, selected 4th, 8th, and 12th graders will participate in a science pilot test, including interactive computer tasks to be administered from March 17 – April 18, 2014.

The results from NAEP are published as The Nation’s Report Card. For 2014, results will include information on student performance for the nation on the 8th grade social studies and technology and engineering literacy assessments. Results from the science pilot test will be used to prepare for the NAEP 2015 operational assessment. NAEP does not provide results for individual students, schools, or districts in Oregon.

Testing procedures and training requirements for NAEP administration are established by the National Assessment Governing Board and the National Center for Education Statistics, not the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). This ensures that testing procedures are the same in every state to provide a common measure of student achievement. NAEP will send a team of trained Assessment Administrators to each school selected for NAEP. The team is responsible for providing all NAEP materials, administering the assessment to students, and administering surveys to school staff. This practice frees up the NAEP assessment time for principals, teachers, and counselors.

The NAEP assessments do not impose consequences for the student or the school and are instead intended purely to provide a picture of educational performance and progress.

The NAEP Questions Tool, located online at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrls/, provides teachers, students, and parents with sample items from previous assessments. Additional NAEP materials, including assessment frameworks and item specifications, are available on the ODE web site at http://www.ode.state.or.us/go/naep/.

Differences between NAEP and OAKS

Unlike Oregon’s Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (OAKS), NAEP does not provide individual scores for students, schools, or districts in Oregon. There are other important differences between NAEP and OAKS assessments. The NAEP math and reading assessments are paper-pencil tests that include both multiple-choice and constructed-response items. The OAKS reading and math assessments are computer adaptive tests. OAKS math assessments include multiple-choice and machine-scored constructed-response items, while OAKS reading assessments consist of multiple-choice items. NAEP produces state results only for 4th and 8th graders, while OAKS reports results for students in grades 3-8 and high school.

Finding the Scores

Interpreting the NAEP scores is not easy. The NAEP Web site page entitled State Profiles presents key data about each state's performance in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics, reading, writing, and science for grades 4 and 8. You can quickly see how a state performed over time, view a state’s demographics, download snapshot reports, and compare each state’s overall performance to the nation and each other. It is inappropriate to compare scores across subjects.

The Oregon Department of Education (OED) also has information about NAEP and you can view the scores from 1998 to the latest tests at the ODE Web site.

Test Schedule for 2014

2013 Results for Math and Reading

Oregon students read and do math at middle-of-the-road levels compared with students nationwide and showed no improvement from two years ago except in eighth-grade reading, according to results from the only standardized tests taken by a representative sample of students in every state.

Oregon's stagnation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, which measured math and reading skills in grades four and eight, went against the national trend of improvement on three of those four exams from 2011 to 2013.

Oregon's performance also starkly contrasted with that in neighboring Washington, where students registered significant improvements on three of the tests and significantly outperformed the national average on all four.

Like the Smarter Balanced tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams set a much higher bar than Oregon's state tests for what students in each grade should be able to do. Unlike OAKS, both of those tests also require students to construct some answers on their own, not simply choose a multiple-choice answer. Those tests, called Smarter Balanced tests, are linked to the new Common Core State Standards being rolled out in Oregon and 44 other states. They will replace the OAKS reading and math tests, which will be given for the last time this spring.

The greater rigor of those tests explains why, although OAKS scores show about 70 percent or more of Oregon students meet reading and math performance benchmarks, scores on the 2013 National Assessment tests showed only about 35 to 40 percent of Oregon fourth- and eighth-graders are "proficient" at reading and math.

Just 34 percent of Oregon students scored proficient at fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math, exactly matching the national average. Massachusetts was the top state in both those subjects, with 48 percent and 56 percent of students, respectively, scoring proficient. Washington was also in the top tier of states, with 40 percent and 42 percent of students scoring proficient on those tests.

Source: "Oregon students' reading and math skills stuck mostly at average levels, national exam results say," by Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian. November 7, 2013

Overall Results

Nationally representative samples of more than 376,000 fourth-graders and 341,000 eighth-graders were assessed in either mathematics or reading in 2013. Results are reported for public and private school students in the nation, and for public school students in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Department of Defense schools.

Average mathematics scores for fourth- and eighth-graders in 2013 were 1 point higher than in 2011, and 28 and 22 points higher respectively in comparison to the first assessment year in 1990.

Hispanic students made gains in mathematics from 2011 to 2013 at both grades 4 and 8.
Fourth- and eighth-grade female students scored higher in mathematics in 2013 than in 2011, but the scores for fourth- and eighth-grade male students did not change significantly over the same period.

NAEP results are accessed in a new interactive Web site at http://nationsreportcard .gov/reading_math_2013. The results from the 2013 assessments in mathematics and reading at grades 4 and 8 are highlighted on a report and explored in more detail with interactive graphics, downloadable data, and enhanced features for viewing state results. The best page to view to obtain a look at all the states performance on the tests is How Are States Performing.

2013 Math Test Results

At each grade, students responded to questions designed to measure what they know and can do across five mathematics content areas: number properties and operations; measurement; geometry; data analysis, statistics, and probability; and algebra.

Each state and jurisdiction that participated in the NAEP 2013 mathematics assessment receives a one-page snapshot report that presents key findings and trends in a condensed format. The reports in this series present bulleted text describing overall student results, bar charts showing NAEP achievement levels for each year in which the state participated, and tables displaying results by gender, race/ethnicity, and eligibility for free/reduced-price lunch. In addition, bulleted text describes the trends in average scale score gaps for gender, race/ethnicity, and eligibility for free/reduced-price lunch. A map comparing the average score in 2013 to other states/jurisdictions is also displayed.

Grade Four Oregon Math Test Results This is a one-page snapshot report of the 4th grade Oregon scores. In 2013, the average score of fourth-grade students in Oregon was 240. This was not significantly different from the average score of 241 for public school students in the nation.
Grade Eight Oregon Math Test Results This is a one-page snapshot report of the 8th grade Oregon scores. In 2013, the average score of eighth-grade students in Oregon was 284. This was not significantly different from the average
score of 284 for public school students in the nation.

2013 Reading Test Results

At each grade, students responded to questions designed to measure their reading comprehension across two types of texts: literary and informational. The NAEP reading assessment measures students’ reading comprehension by asking them to read selected grade-appropriate materials and answer questions based on what they have read. At each grade, students responded to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions designed to measure their eading comprehension across two types of texts

Literary texts include fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry.
Informational texts include expository, argumentative and persuasive, procedural, and document texts.

The complete subject area frameworks are available on the National Assessment Governing Board Web site at http://www.nagb.org/publications/frameworks.html.

Each state and jurisdiction that participated in the NAEP 2013 reading assessment receives a one-page snapshot report that presents key findings and trends in a condensed format. The reports in this series present bulleted text describing overall student results, bar charts showing NAEP achievement levels for each year in which the state participated, and tables displaying results by gender, race/ethnicity, and eligibility for free/reduced-price lunch. In addition, bulleted text describes the trends in average scale score gaps for gender, race/ethnicity, and eligibility for free/reduced-price lunch. A map comparing the average score in 2013 to other states/jurisdictions is also displayed.

Grade Four Oregon Reading Test Results This is a one-page snapshot report of the 4th grade Oregon scores. In 2013, the average score of fourth-grade students in Oregon was 219. This was not significantly different from the average score of 221 for public school students in the nation.
Grade Eight Oregon Reading Test Results This is a one-page snapshot report of the 8th grade Oregon scores. In 2013, the average score of eighth-grade students in Oregon was 268. This was higher than the average score of 266 for public school students in the nation.

Benchmark a USA High School Against World's Best Schools

There was a time when middle-class parents in America could be — and were — content to know that their kids’ public schools were better than those in the next neighborhood over. As the world has shrunk, though, the next neighborhood over is now Shanghai or Helsinki. Andreas Schleicher — who runs the global exam that compares how 15-year-olds in public schools around the world do in applied reading, math and science skills — as saying imagine, in a few years, that you could sign on to a Web site and see how your school compares with a similar school anywhere in the world. And then you could take this information to your superintendent and ask: “Why are we not doing as well as schools in China or Finland?”

That day has arrived, thanks to a successful pilot project involving 105 U.S. schools recently completed by Schleicher’s team at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which coordinates the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA test, and Jon Schnur’s team at America Achieves, which partnered with the O.E.C.D. Starting in the fall of 2013, any high school in America will be able to benchmark itself against the world’s best schools, using a new tool that schools can register for at www.americaachieves.org. It is comparable to PISA and measures how well students can apply their mastery of reading, math and science to real world problems.

The pilot study was described in an America Achieves report entitled “Middle Class or Middle of the Pack?.” The report compares U.S. middle-class students to their global peers of similar socioeconomic status on the 2009 PISA exams.

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